by Maggie Marr
I smile at Mom but her brow is furrowed and her lips are pulled down at the corner. Uh-oh. Storm clouds brewing, and there is likely no good reason why. I follow Mom’s gaze toward the far side of the room.
“Mom, you okay?” I grasp her upper arm with my hand.
“Richard, I don’t wish to cause a scene,” she whispers, “but it’s incredibly difficult for me to be here with that woman.”
That woman? Fuck. That woman is the woman that Mom is convinced I’ve slept with, and while she’s absolutely right, she thinks I am Richard and she’s married to me and that I’m carrying on with another mother in Rachel’s classroom.
My sanity careens just a smidge.
“Let’s get Lily and go.” I gently move Mom forward toward Lily, where she stands putting away the cowbell.
“Hey, doll, ready to go?”
“George wants to have a play date.”
The boy standing beside Lily looks familiar. Discomfort edges around my belly. I glance from George to Lily. “Well, Lily, I’m sure your mom would be okay with a play date but I’ve got Grandma, and we’re supposed to meet your mom for dinner tonight and—”
“Hi.” Kendall’s voice is smooth without evidence of the anger she felt the last time I saw her, but her eyes still have that hard-edged crazy. Mom stiffens. Kendall stands behind George and places her hands on his shoulders. “We’d like to have Lily over for a play date.”
I know what kind of play date Kendall wants to have with me.
“I’m sure Rachel will be okay with it, but we’re meeting her for dinner tonight. I’ll have her call you.”
“No.” Mom’s voice is low and coiled tight with rage. “You cannot have my daughter in your home.” Her voice rises with each word, as though every syllable adds fuel to a fire. “You whore. You horrible slut! How can you do this? How can you sleep with my husband and then ask my daughter to come to your home?”
The classroom is silent.
“Mom,” I say softly. “Mom, please, we need to go.”
Confusion flickers in Lily’s eyes.
“Mom, what’s a slut?” George asks.
Kendall’s jaw tightens. “We’ll discuss this in the car.” She turns George away from me, Mom, and Lily.
“Come Rachel, you have no business being around this type of woman.” Mom sniffs and grabs Lily’s hand. “Richard, if you wish to stay with that whore then please do. Lily and I will be in the car.”
I turn to Kendal and mouth ‘Sorry’.
Most of the parents in Lily’s classroom know Mom has Alzheimer’s. Lily’s teacher flashes me an angry look as I trail Mom and Lily out the classroom door. Mrs. Bennett won’t be allowing Mom in her classroom any more.
Chapter Eight
“Uncle Jake, why was Grandma so confused?” Lily spoons mac-n-cheese into her mouth. The remnants of our take-out dinner litter Rachel’s table.
Rachel answers Lily’s question. “Honey, it’s the Alzheimer’s. Sometimes she doesn’t know who she is or who she’s with.”
“That’s why she always thinks I’m Mommy and calls me Rachel and Uncle Jake Richard?” Lily says.
Rachel nods.
“What does whore mean?”
Rachel coughs on her wine. “It’s a grown up word that we’ll discuss later.” She gives me that bug-eyed mom look that asks ‘what the hell happened’ without saying the words. “Lily, honey, go get on your jammies and brush your teeth. It’s almost time for bed.”
Lily slides from her chair and heads toward the stairs. We both watch until her feet disappear from view.
“What happened?” Rachel carries the three plates to the sink. I stack containers and walk them to the trash can.
“Same as always. Mom thinks I’m Dad and that Dad had an affair with that mom in Lily’s class, what’s her name? Kendall. Don’t you remember the music performance last spring?”
“I got a call from Mrs. Bennett on the way home.”
“She looked pissed after Mom did her thing.” I dump the bio-degradable containers into the trash.
“She doesn’t think it’s appropriate for Mom to come to the school if she’s disruptive. It’ll upset the children.”
“Bullshit snobby private school,” I mumble.
“You have no idea how hard that’ll be if I can’t take Mom into the classroom. I take Lily to summer enrichment and Mom to her day program before I go to work. I can’t do that now. I can’t swing by and pick up mom and then drop Lily, because I can’t leave Mom in the car when I drop off Lily.”
I cross my arms over my chest.
“We need to get her in a placement,” Rachel says, scrubbing the plates in the sink before loading them into the dishwasher.
“Isn’t she on the waiting list for—”
“Right, I know.” Rachel’s voice is sharp. “But that’s a waiting list.” She stops scrubbing and her shoulders drop. Her lips pucker tight and I see her shaking shoulders before I hear the tears in her voice. “I can’t do this,” she says, her voice quivering on each syllable. “I can’t do all this on my own.”
“Hey.” I move in to hug my sister. It’s part of keeping Rachel on the rails where her life is concerned. How she manages this juggling act I have no idea, but she does, and most of the time she makes the entire act look easy. She elbows me away.
“I don’t need a hug, I need some help.”
“Okay, want to hire a driver? Want me to—”
“No, I don’t want you to hire a driver. I want you to drive Mom. I want you to take her in the morning and pick her up after her elder enrichment appointments. I want you to start looking for another place for her to live, in case we’re on this wait-list for too long. Really, what I want, what I need, is to not worry about any of it for a while.”
I get what Rachel is asking, but I’m not sure why she’s asking it. “Rachel, there are people we can hire to help. People we’ve hired to help, why can’t—”
“Because you’ve gotten a free pass for five years. Being generous about helping to pay for mom’s care isn’t the same as caring for Mom.”
Her words sucker punch me in the gut. I want to disagree with her and argue that my money makes Mom’s life easier, but what my money does is make my life easier for me.
“I want you to spend more time with Mom and not because I want to spend less time with her, but because I don’t have any more time to give.”
“Mommy, can you braid my hair?”
Lily stands in the doorway with a brush and two rubber bands. She wears her unicorn pajamas. The truth hits me, from five a.m. to eight p.m. every day of Rachel’s life, she takes care of other people. Entirely and completely. While she’s at work she cleans up societal messes in her courtroom. At home she takes care of Lily and Mom. She even takes care of me when I’m losing my shit.
When does anyone take care of Rachel?
Even now, after her long-ass day, Rachel smiles, dries her hands, and walks over to braid Lily’s hair. She wants to hold Lily and hug her and put her to bed, but then what will Rachel get? Maybe thirty minutes of alone time before she collapses into bed and sets her alarm for 5 a.m. so she can get up and do it all over again?
I’m a little-brother slacker. Rachel takes care of everything and everyone and it’s usually not until times like this, when she’s completely overloaded between work and Mom and Lily, that I actually realize that maybe I should stop being a self-involved a-hole and offer to help.
Yeah. She takes care of our entire family over and over and over, day in and day out and I forget to notice until she’s on the edge of collapse, because that’s what you ladies do. That’s who you are. You make all this self-sacrifice and continual quiet labor for the people you love seem so fucking effortless, all the while the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Sisyphus wasn’t a man holding the weight of the world. Naw. Sisyphus was a woman.
“No problem. I’ll take Mom in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon.”
Gratitude washes over
Rachel’s face. I don’t deserve her gratitude, because it’s Rachel that keeps this entire family, or what’s left of it, on the rails and out of jail, and somehow functioning in our own happy, yet dysfunctional way. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?”
Rachel nods. “Thank you.”
And I feel grateful that I’ve done something for someone else simply because I love them, and I haven’t done that in a long while.
Chapter Nine
“Please, Jake. Wonderfuck me. Please.”
She moans, and the head of my cock nudges the tight muscles of her sex. Her eyes fire with desire and want and need. Is that love? Fuck yes, it’s love. Tara loves me. I press forward into her sex and her mouth drops open. Her face contorts with pleasure. This is heaven. Desire thrums through my body. I’m above her. I lean forward and press my lips to her eyes, her nose, and then her lips.
“Jake,” she whispers. “Jake, I love you.”
“I love you too, baby.” My back muscles tighten and heat shatters through me. “Yes,” I say, needing this release wanting this release—
Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz.
I open my eyes. My hand reaches for my cock, hopeful. Oh my god, please let me be hard.
My cock is soft.
Fuck.
Was it even hard when I was dreaming?
Bzzz. Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
The woman I’m furious with is the woman I need. There’s a thin line between love and hate. Even I don’t need a therapist to know that I am hopping back and forth over that damn line where Tara is concerned.
I flip open my WF phone. It’s a number I don’t recognize.
‘Need to see you.’
I’ve stopped answering. I’m no good to women right now. There’s nothing I can do. Well, perhaps not nothing. I have lips and a tongue that still works, and I am good with my hands, but the level of frustration for me would be too high and eventually for them as well.
‘Sorry. Can’t,’ I type back, unsure which of my pre-Tara women this is. Silence. The silence is so fucking deafening I could lose what’s left of my mind. I’m up and out of my bed and packing for a weekend that I have no idea what it will bring.
Sex.
I’ll get the relief of sex. I need that. But will I hate myself for needing it from the woman who fucked up my life?
I walk into the bathroom and look into the mirror. Unshaven. Tired. Rings beneath my eyes. Face it, man. Face it, and discuss it, and figure this shit out. The things I don’t want to do.
The same things I avoided with Susie.
I knew. I had to know. I pretended not to know. At least that’s what I believe now. All those nights she came home and showered. The afternoons I didn’t know where she was. The phone calls when she whispered into the phone. All those times, I should’ve looked at Susie and asked, but instead, didn’t, because I trusted her. I wanted to trust her. I wanted to give the very best of me that I had to give.
And I did.
I should’ve known.
I did know, didn’t I?
My life is a mess. I turn away from the guy in the mirror because right now that guy is the last person I want to see.
***
My blood boils. I need to fuck. I need to fuck in a way I can’t possibly explain. The feeling is visceral and carnal and inexplicable. Fury rages through my chest because I’m unable to do what I need to do.
“I’m curious. What are some things you do for pleasure?” Vida asks.
Sitting in her office doesn’t help my mood. In fact I’m even more pissed off than when I saw her last week.
“Fucking.” I hold her gaze and plant my charming smile in my face. “I enjoy fucking for relaxation.”
She’s heard everything before, because the word, the thought, the idea of me having loads of sex doesn’t break through her smiling patina.
“Sex is a primary enjoyment for you.”
“Isn’t it for everyone?”
“No, not always.”
And I know that to be the truth. Sex wasn’t a source of enjoyment for Susie. Sex for Susie was like whiskey to an alcoholic, or meth to an addict; a way to numb the pain and not feel.
“For some people there’s little satisfaction in sex. What is it about the act that is satisfying for you?”
“Aside from the ejaculating part?”
“If that is the only satisfying part.”
“The physical pleasure without emotional intimacy pleases me. I like to have lots of sex with lots of women so that I don’t have to feel the emotions that come with intimacy. Emotions are inconvenient and uncontrollable. I don’t like to feel them.”
“Ah. Not always the wisest choice, to refuse to feel our emotions. You know they don’t disappear just because we repress them.”
“They become rage.”
“Sometimes, yes. They can manifest in all kinds of ways. Physical illness. Rage. Sexual dysfunction.”
I shift in my seat. Sexual dysfunction because I don’t allow myself to feel?
“Could that include impotence?” I ask.
“It could,” Vida says, with a practiced nonchalance that she’s affected to appear non inquisitive and nonjudgmental. A way for therapists to gain their patients’ trust.
I lean forward. “What would it mean if a man could only get hard for one woman?”
“Do you mean no ability to become aroused other than intercourse with one woman?”
I nod.
“Masturbation?”
“No.”
“Pornography?”
“Tried it.”
“Other women?”
“Not happening.”
Vida sighs. “It could mean that there is a high level of anxiety or stress and that this person is the one place where you feel safe.”
Bullshit. I don’t feel safe with Tara, I feel completely turned on. Trust? Nope. I don’t trust Tara.
“Or it could mean that there is a trauma either conscious or unconscious that prevents you from feeling relaxed enough about sex to have it with anyone other than that one person.”
Maybe, possibly true. Maybe even unconsciously I feel safest with Tara because she knows about Wonderfuck. She is definitely the only person I trusted enough to tell about Wonderfuck.
“Jake, is this what’s happening to you?” Vida’s voice is soft. She’s being extra gentle in asking, because men and their yam sack, nothing is more intimate to us than our erections.
“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. Ever since I started seeing this woman I can’t be with anyone else.”
“Do you want to be with anyone else?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is I want to be able to be with someone else if I want to.”
Feeling stranded, isolated, and unable to fuck, isn’t how I want my life to go.
Chapter Ten
Fog smothers the sky above the Pacific. No bits of peek-a-boo blue welcome me to Malibu. I pull past the guard gate, down the narrow enclave road, and onto the drive at Tara’s parents’ place in Malibu. The wind whips the palms. The air is cool for a summer day. I park and walk up the steps. The front door is unlocked, just like the last time I was here.
Today, the house feels colder and grayer. Last time I was here, my cock knew what I wanted but my heart, my mind, the rest of me, raged against my need, my desire, my love for Tara.
And now?
My cock grows hard in spite of my doubts.
I walk through the house toward the back slider. Tara stands on the deck and stares out at the ragged surf. The choppy waves pound the shore. Her dark hair swirls on the wind and her fair skin appears porcelain in the gray light. She gazes toward the distance where the water fades into fog as though the world ends at that gray spot miles off shore.
“I betrayed you.” Her words crash into me like glass breaking against tile. She doesn’t look at me, her gaze fixed on the space of nothingness. No light, no water, no sky, no fog, just an impenetrable grayness. “You can’t decide if you hate me or love me.”
A tightening in my chest. My head and heart are in absolute agreement, but my cock wants her. I’m hard. For the first time since the last time I fucked Tara, I’m hard. My body thrums with desire, want, need. I’m furious with her, and yet I want her. Now. Here. My need is carnal and beyond my heart or my mind. This desire seeps deep into my bones.
For five years, Wonderfucking was my salvation, and now my ability to Wonderfuck away the pain is lost to me.
She took my identity, my secret, my solace as Wonderfuck, and gave my story to the world. She took my identity and she’s taken my ability to fuck any woman but her.
I walk to her. My eyes lock on hers. No words. I have no words to explain my feelings. The fog thickens; a shroud between us and the world. I reach for her and pull her to me; my desire, my intentions on my face. My fingers weave through her hair. I bend forward and press my lips to hers.
Slow, hot, and full of need. My desire clear with my kiss. I slide my lips from hers and grasp her elbow. Her body presses against mine. Fingertips over the cotton of her dress sliding down the hem, to the flesh of her thighs. I slide my hands back up beneath the cloth. No panties. Ah, fuck yes, the warmth of her sex bare for me.
My fingertip slides between the lips of her sex and presses her clit.
“Oh Jake, yes,” she moans beneath my kiss. Her hips press forward and my cock strains against my jeans. My fingertip circles her sex and her mouth parts, opening for me. Her hands grasp my zipper and she pulls it down. Hands grasp my cock and pull my sex from my jeans.
My finger slides from her clit into her sex. She clenches around me.
Fuck. I pull my lips from her mouth and turn her toward the ocean. Her hands grasp the rail in front of her and I lift her skirt above her bare ass. My hands slide around the roundness, caressing the soft flesh. I press my lips to the round, fleshy part of her ass. Soft. Smooth. Perfection.
Smack.
Her body tenses. She gasps.
“Jake, oh my god, I’ve missed you.” She turns her head toward me and her face is in profile. The sharp cut of her jaw, the perfection of her cheekbones and nose. I’m so fucking angry with her and yet I need her, I want her, I can’t get enough of her. I tighten my arm around her waist, my throbbing cock pressing upward. She bends forward and my cock presses up into her sex. I thrust. I’m deep into her sex.