by Maggie Marr
Rachel presses her lips together, which tells me that she knew about the therapist before I told her.
“Did you ask her to order therapy?”
“That would be completely inappropriate.”
Great lawyer. Awesome judge. Again, bad fucking liar. I say nothing. I don’t want to have this argument. Rachel has hounded me about going to therapy since Susie died.
“Let me know if you need a referral,” she says, and walks toward the door between the house and the garage.
“Thanks.” I open up the third giant box that’s shoved into the half of the garage that doesn’t house a car. So far I’ve found nothing but old newspapers, car parts, and tools. All of which now lie in their respective piles on the table I set up near the garage door.
“You only have a week, right? To find a therapist?”
“Thought you didn’t discuss it.”
She’s incriminated herself.
“Did you see…” Rachel’s words drift away. Great. Now there are two names she’s uncertain she should say in front of me. Not doing so great with the women I choose to fall in love with.
“Tara? You can say her name. I know we argued about her, but I’m over it.”
“Did you see her? In court?”
“We didn’t speak, but yeah, she was there. And so was Mr. Douche.”
“I’m guessing Mr. Douche is her ex-fiancé?”
“The guy I beat the shit out of because he knocked her on her ass? Yeah, he was there, and they were acting like long lost buds.”
Rachel bites her bottom lip. Her face is tight as though debating whether to remain silent or tell me something that she thinks I don’t want to know.
“Spill it.”
Rachel sighs and glances toward the ceiling. “Look, I know you don’t want me talking to Tara—”
“I don’t care,” I say, sounding more like a fourteen-year-old boy than a grown man. But ladies, no surprise. There are similarities. We are eternal man-children. “I’m over it.”
“Not true. You lost your shit about me hanging out with Tara.”
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
“She called me, okay, just so we’re clear. We chatted. It would seem she’s been talking to Greg.”
“You mean Douchey? She’s been talking to Douchey?”
Rachel nods.
“Is she a fucking idiot?”
“No, she’s not an idiot. She’s a woman who was in love with a man who made a mistake.”
“Sticking your cock in another woman’s vagina isn’t a mistake. That’s pretty intentional. A mistake is adding two plus two and getting five, which is actually more likely a mistake than fucking a woman other than your fiancé.”
Rachel sighs. “While I agree with you 100 percent, I do understand what’s going on in her mind. Okay. There were about two-and-a-half minutes when I talked to Dalton.”
“You talked to Dalton? As in getting back together talked?”
“It was when Lily was hospitalized, for that fever? Right after he left and he had to come back and well…”
“You slept with him?”
My sister turns a shade of red reserved for fire engines and tomatoes.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m not proud of it, okay? But we were still married. I felt abandoned and Lily was in the damn hospital. Emotions were on high, okay? It was a rough time. So yes, we did. We slept together.” Rachel takes a deep breath. “Then his girlfriend called from South America and I realized that he was a dumbass and I couldn’t be married to a dumbass.”
“Okay, I get it. You were still married. You’d been together for years, Lily was sick. Fine. But what’s Tara’s excuse?” I say it like I’m indifferent, but on the inside I am fucking enraged. Is she fucking him? Is she seeing him? What the fuck is going on? “They don’t have a kid together, no one is in the hospital, and there’s no reason she should be talking to him.”
Rachel lifts an eyebrow and gives me ‘the look’, the one she’s reserved for me, her little brother, since the beginning of time. The look that says not only are you stupid but you simply don’t understand the female mind, which I don’t…really, no man does.
“What? Why the look? What?”
“Okay, yes, you’re right. They don’t have children and no one is in the hospital, buuut, she did love him and they were engaged. The wedding was only six weeks away when she caught him and then she fell for this other guy who she found out has a bit of a problem with commitment….”
I say nothing. My sister knows less than half of what went down between me and Tara.
“Then she writes this amazeballs story about another guy who is perhaps the sexiest man in the universe.”
I cringe. If Rachel knew who Wonderfuck was she definitely wouldn’t think he was sexy.
“Then Greg calls her to tell her he misses her and he’s gone to therapy, and that they should talk.”
“Therapy? What the fuck is it with you women and therapy? As though therapy can erase every fucking sin?” I shake the trash bag and throw shit into it, disgusted by this entire conversation
“We believe in the power of change and redemption. We love a good redemption story. You know the bad boy who sees the error of his ways then goes through the long dark night of the soul, and because of the woman of his dreams, comes out the other side a better man able to love and care for the one woman he always loved.”
Rachel stands with her hand clasped in front of her chest and her eyes wide.
“You read too many romance novels. You realize that we have dicks and if we’re assholes who stick our dicks into other women when we’re in a committed relationship that shit rarely changes…especially if it’s a woman we’ve cheated on before.”
“Whatever. We want to believe men can change. We change. We want to believe that you can too.”
“We’re a bunch of fourteen-year-old boys in grown up bodies. You really need to take the fucking keys to the world away from us.”
“The future is female, brother.”
“I’m down with that shit. Smash the patriarchy, sister. I am A-Okay with female overlords.”
Rachel smiles and shakes her head. “You’re a smart man. One of the reasons I still love you.”
I can’t help but smile. Rachel is smart and amazing and has always loved our family with a ferocious loyalty, even when our family was fucking nutbag crazy. Plus, she’s bailed my ass out of jail on more than one occasion, which is really more than any person should ever ask of their big sister.
“Okay fine…I get it. But it doesn’t mean I like it. Even if we’re not going to be together, it doesn’t mean she should be with Douchebucket.”
“Then tell her.”
I look away from Rachel. I don’t want to have to tell Tara anything. I can barely talk to her. Of course she’s the only woman I’m sleeping with, but we’re really not talking. Not about anything important. I’m still too pissed about her article.
“Rachel?” The voice calls from inside the house.
“Oh my god, did Mom just say my name?” Mom hasn’t used either of our names in nearly three weeks, plus she’s stopped calling me Richard. We were both worried that the part of Mom’s brain that remembers us was finished. We turn toward the door leading into the house.
“Mom?” Rachel scurries inside and I follow. Mom stands in the center of the living room in a white gown…is that…does she have on…
“Can you believe this still fits?”
Rachel’s jaw drops open and her hand presses to her cheek. “Mom, is that…is that your wedding gown?”
“It was on the top shelf in my closest where I’ve always kept it, but then it was on the twin bed in the spare bedroom and I thought someone must have gotten it down. I don’t know why I put it on. Guess I wanted to see if I could still get it on.”
How the fuck is this my life? My sixty-seven-year-old mother stands in the middle of her living room wearing her wedding dress and for the first
time in three weeks she remembers Rachel’s name?
“Richard, do you remember this day?”
Oh fuck. Yep, she remembers Rachel but thinks I’m dear old Dad. When Mom thinks I’m Dad, I have this overwhelming need to not break Mom’s heart. To at least say the things that she’d want Dad to say.
“You look as beautiful now as you did then.”
Her smile could light up Los Angeles. Those are words that any woman would want to hear from their husband of forty-five years.
“Mom, let’s go take this off and pack it up so it doesn’t get ripped,” Rachel says and walks toward mom. Mom pulls her gaze from me and gives Rachel a sharp look.
“Don’t touch me, I don’t even know who you are.”
My sister’s gaze shifts, and the corner of her mouth slips down. She recovers and pastes a smile onto her face. We’ve been through this before, this emotional whiplash that Mom causes because of this bullshit disease that shatters our hearts every time she’s here. And then she’s gone.
“No problem,” Rachel says, her voice patient and filled with love. “I just wondered if I could help you with your dress.”
Mom marches past Rachel toward the stairs. Her chin at a familiar angle, a slant we’d seen directed toward our father on many late nights when he returned home smelling of perfume, wearing lipstick on his collar that was a different shade than Mom’s.
Rachel follows Mom up the stairs. She holds the train of the white gown, tinged yelIow with age, my heart unsure it will ever recover from all the bullshit in my life.
Chapter Seven
My cock is limp. I grasp my dick and squeeze. Nope. Nothing. I’ve tried porn. I’ve obviously tried to jack off. Not a hint of wood. I close my eyes. I think of Tara.
Naked.
Her breasts full and round, and her mouth a gorgeous O shape. She kneels before me, such a gorgeous sight. Her mouth opens. She takes my cock into her hand and pulls my dick into her mouth…
I stroke up and down. Oh yeah. Getting harder. Firmer. Tara’s mouth….yes, yes….Tara’s mouth sucking my cock. From limp noodle to harder, not hard, but hard-ish. I stroke down and up. The wet suction of her mouth on my cock. Her slick lips on my flesh. Her mouth open and sliding over me. This is working. Finally, something other than Tara being in my bedroom is working. Granted, it’s still her image, but oh yes, fuck yes, my cock is nearly hard. Faster and faster I stroke myself. Heat builds. Come on baby, come on. My body responds. I hold the vision of Tara in my mind. Fuck yes, I can jack off, I can masturbate, to Tara I can—
“What the Fuck!”
Gone. My erection is fucking gone! Like a snowflake in an oven, the motherfucker has gone limp again.
“Fuck!” I jump from my bed and force myself not to slam my fist into a wall. “Fuck!” I yank at my hair. Buck-ass naked and fucking pissed, I walk toward my bathroom. My phone buzzes.
Not my personal phone, but my Wonderfuck phone.
I grab the phone. I look at the number. My cock tightens. Tara. Fuck. It’s Tara.
I don’t want to see Tara. But I need to see Tara.
I need to fuck. I need to fuck her. I can only fuck her.
‘Friday?’
I’m like a fucking addict. ‘Where?’
‘Malibu.’
Me going to Malibu on a Friday will mean me being with Tara for an entire weekend. Can I do that? Do I want to do that? The last time we were together in Malibu was when I walked out and left her crying on the couch. That was meant to be the end.
I thought it was the end.
I wanted it to be the end.
Didn’t I?
I wish…I wish…what do I wish?
I pull my hands through my hair and shake my head. I wish I could go back. Back to when? Back to before Tara wrote that fucking article, to before Susie died, back to when—
‘Yes.’
I type yes because yes is the only response that I can possibly give.
***
“You’re here because—”
“The Judge forced me to be here,” I say. I shoot Vida my most charming smile. The smile that causes women to remove their panties.
She lifts an eyebrow and tilts her head. “Unwilling participants don’t usually get much from therapy.” Her tone is a study in non-judgment.
This’ll be interesting if nothing else. I’ve hidden my true feelings for years. This woman ¬– my therapist by court order – Vida, has to do the same thing every damn day. Hide her true feelings. What’s it like being a waste can for other people’s emotions? A place where they toss their emotional bullshit? If I ask that exact question, how pissed off will my new therapist be?
Instead I ask, “How many years have you practiced?” My gaze flits around her office. The colors are calming. Rich and deep jewels tones. Blue and green with some artwork on the walls that is meant to soothe. Her diploma is framed and hangs over her desk and books on shelves against the far wall. She sits opposite me on a chair while I inhabit a gray couch.
“Twenty-five years,” she says. I feel her gaze on me. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
I look into her grayish-blue eyes. “You don’t get a file?”
“I fill out the forms you provide that indicate to the court you’ve participated, but no, they don’t contact me and tell me what you did, nor do they inquire as to what we talk about.”
A yellow pad for notes rests on her lap and a pen lies on the table beside her.
I take a deep breath. “Rage,” I say. “Justified rage.”
Again, with the lifted eyebrow, followed by silence. This is a technique, the silence. One that I’ve used in fact, as a businessman and as Wonderfuck. Silence is a key that unlocks the door to other people’s thoughts, feelings, and needs. I wait. I wait longer than most people would wait to fill the silence. Can I make her uncomfortable with my silence? I’m pretty certain I can, eventually. Maybe not now, but soon enough.
“A woman. My neighbor was confronted by her ex fiancé and I beat the shit out of him.”
“Why?”
“He knocked her down.”
“He pushed her? Tried to harm her?”
I shift in my seat. “She grabbed his arm. He jerked it from her. She fell, and I hit him.”
“Were you involved with her?”
“Not then.”
“And now?”
Am I involved with Tara? Jake isn’t, but Wonderfuck… “No.”
“And in between then and now?”
She’s got me. I can lie or I can be honest. Let’s go with honest and see just how good Vida can dig. “Yes.”
I go on to tell her parts of our short, sexual relationship. I leave out the sexy details and I omit the parts as Wonderfuck. I leave the story open-ended as to why this relationship failed.
“That sounds intense.”
Lady, you have no idea. She doesn’t have a motherfucking clue as to the intensity of my life, my feelings, my pain.
“Do you still have feelings for her?”
I glance at the clock. Smile at Vida. “Looks like our time is up?” I say with an obvious dodge.
She nods. She smiles. A knowing look flits through her eyes. My chest tightens with an uncomfortable rage.
“I have time for an answer,” she says.
My smile drops from my face. Vida wants an answer? I’ll give her one. I lean forward and drop my elbows to my knees, an intimate motion, as though I’m about to let her in on a secret, one that I haven’t shared with anyone, maybe not ever.
“Vida.” I look directly into her eyes waiting for her to blink, which she does. “I’m simply too fucking broken to care anymore.”
Twenty-five years. For a millisecond, Vida’s lips turn into a tiny O as though I may have penetrated that twenty-five years of therapeutic practice façade. Maybe I’ve thrown her for just a moment. Maybe.
“See you next week,” I say, and pop up and walk out of her office. Let Vida chew on my fucked up psyche for a while.
***
“Richard, isn’t this where Rachel goes to school?”
There are so many wrong things about the sentence that just exited Mom’s mouth. Instead of running through the mistakes, I pull into the parking spot next to the front door of Lily’s school and turn off my car.
“Yes.” I get out, walk around and open the car door for Mom. Getting Lily only takes five minutes, but I can’t risk leaving Mom alone in my car for even that little bit of time. I’d come back and find my car on the front lawn, or Mom lost and wandering in the neighborhood surrounding Lily’s school, or perhaps hanging upside down from the jungle gym in the play yard. I don’t know. None of us do. Mom’s become a complete and total wild card.
“Let’s get Lily.” I clasp her hand. Her smile crinkles the lines around her eyes. Is she smiling at me or is she smiling at Richard, my dad, and the guy she most often thinks I am?
Does it matter?
Not a fucking bit because she’s smiling, and she’s safe, and she loves the person she’s with, and she’s excited to see the person we’re about to pick up from school.
We turn down the open-air walkway toward Lily’s classroom. Today is music day in the summer enrichment program, and the strains of bongos and tambourines float toward us. Mom and I walk into Lily’s classroom, a gaggle of parents line the wall near the door, all waiting for the last few minutes of music to end.
Lily sits between a red-haired girl and a boy with curly black hair. She pounds a cow bell with a stick.
Because, who doesn’t need more cow bell?
The music teacher keeps the beat by slapping her hand against her thigh, and the kids shake their bodies and play their instruments. The tune? Who knows? But their joy and enthusiasm rocket this jamboree into the stratosphere. A smile curves over my face, reflecting back the look on fifteen kids’ faces.
“Such a beautiful job!” the music teacher exclaims, and these kids absolutely believe her because their music is beautiful, their joy is magnetic. This moment for all the parents and aunts and uncles lining the back wall makes everyone forget about their bills, their mortgages, their jobs. All any of us are thinking about this second is how fucking-fantastic it is to watch these kids light up this fucking room.