You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  Sighing, she makes her way to the toilet and then to her dressing table. She is facing her reflection but her eyes are vacant as she unscrews the lid of a jar and wipes cream on her face. She was a striking woman, back in her prime. Sharp, high cheekbones, straight nose with a slight upturn at the end, generous lips. Lustrous blonde hair, thick and naturally streaked. Patrician good looks, with more than a hint of sensuality.

  And now look at me, she thinks.

  No one prepares you for how things fall apart.

  A rabbit-hole has opened up and she tumbles in, all the way back to the night when she and Gordon first met, at a cocktail party given by the loathsome Binky Booth in that vast but rundown apartment on Seventy-Ninth.

  She was only twenty. Gordon was older, but hardly old. In a place like that—Binky Booth’s, full of Wesleyan students and bankers, maybe a couple of girls dabbling in theater before getting married—Gordon was another thing altogether. He was physically powerful, with broad shoulders, upright posture, thighs with thick muscles that strained his suit-pants. Lillian, along with many of the Wesleyan students and a few of the theater-dabblers, couldn’t look away from him.

  It wasn’t a matter of his being fit, that wasn’t so unusual. It was that his presence felt unpredictable, like he might wheel around and deck someone, or shove someone against a wall, even pull a gun. It felt that way even while he was telling jokes and smiling. She searches for the right word as she wipes the cleansing cream from her face.

  He was just on the point of being menacing, she thinks, nodding to her reflection. A sort of malevolent ebullience.

  It was intoxicating.

  Midway through the party, Gordon made a call from the phone in the kitchen. She was standing in the doorway, watching him. Feeling, for the first time ever, something warm flickering between her legs.

  He shouted into the phone, which—shouting being one of the things her father never did—intensified the flickering. He slammed the receiver into the wall unit and turned around and saw her standing there, saw how she was ready to offer herself up to him though they had not spoken a single sentence to each other.

  And that was it. Thinking back on it, she could see that she had been exactly what he was looking for, a dab of old money polish to add to his portfolio. He had called later in the week, taken her to dinner, led her into the ladies’ room at the The Palm where he had roughly hoisted her skirt around her hips, lifted her to the counter and taken her, right there and then, where anyone might have come in and seen.

  Lillian’s cheeks redden with pleasure at the memory of it, though she clamps her teeth together and scowls.

  She had been his wife during the great rush of money in the late 80s, during the insider trading scandal that nearly ruined him, during all his months of business travel, his ardency, his neglect, and all the rest of it. She had loved him even after she knew him to be cruel, maybe even, for a while, after she saw he was…worse than cruel.

  She goes back and sits on the edge of the bed, pours herself another Dewar’s. She imagines herself in the chapel at Frank E. Campbell’s, discussing caskets with a preternaturally kind funeral director. Imagines Gordon laid out, his face white without any mortician’s cosseting, and she leans back into the pillows and smiles.

  19

  Caroline

  I did not sleep well. Jeerlings do not observe holidays; in fact, I believe the Head Beast hires extras for special holiday torment. They cackled and yawped into the small hours, and the fact of its being Christmas Eve night made me feel much the lonelier, as though all the other people awake at that hour were loving parents assembling shiny red bicycles for their sleeping children, and it was only me staring out at the always-lit streets of the city, solitary and unable to find a moment of peace.

  When I wake, it takes a few moments for my self to settle into my body, which I hope is usual for humans and not something unique to me. Once I am secure in me-ness, other thoughts tumble in: it is Christmas. Marecita won’t be bringing me coffee. And other wisps of somber things, ugly images I push away with my eyes squeezed shut.

  I throw back the covers and put on a robe and slippers, thinking that by not getting dressed I might be able to access some of the carefree joy of Christmas morning that I had as a child. I do have some good memories, you understand. It has not all been drear and hurt. I remember one year, when Wilson and I were around three and five, and I found a longed-for stuffed horse under the tree and he got a toy kitchen that had real but miniature pots and pans. He instantly adored that toy kitchen, and Mummy was the picture of happiness at having hit on the right thing, until Gordon made some nasty remarks about giving his son a present meant for little girls.

  Wait, I was trying to come up with a happy memory, wasn’t I? I do lose track.

  I wonder what Gordon and Mummy would do if I appeared dressed as someone else? What if I showed up in clothes from Old Navy, announced I was, say, Kayley Ann Barker, and asked them to call me Kayley from now on? Probably whisk me off to a fancy hat factory.

  Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.

  I go into my bathroom, splash water on my face and brush my teeth. Because it’s Christmas, I tap out a healthy portion of personality on the vanity and hoover it up. I check my nostrils in the mirror for telltale powder residue, avoiding looking at myself in the eye. Then it’s off to the kitchen to make coffee, an adjunct stimulant to help me get through what will doubtless be a trying morning.

  “Good morning, Mummy!” I sing out, as I’m grinding beans and she walks in wearing a silk dressing gown and oddly, loafers.

  “Merry Christmas, dear,” she says. “Thank you for doing that. Please hurry.”

  “Water’s hot, it won’t be long.”

  “Why are you using the press? It would be so much easier to make it in the electric coffeemaker.”

  “Would you like to do it?”

  “No, thank you. I believe you can fix the settings on the electric one so that the coffee will be ready in the morning, without all this waiting around and fuss.”

  I start whistling. I pour the ground-up coffee into the press, add the hot water, and do a round of jumping jacks, which is not nothing in a bathrobe and slippers. I have a sudden excess of energy that I am compelled to expend.

  “Must you?” says Mummy.

  I continue to ignore her.

  “Lillian!” shouts Gordon from the living room. “Caro!”

  I ignore him too. I do another set of jumping jacks, then get out the coffee cups with little Christmas trees going around the rims. I pour.

  Gordon doesn’t drink coffee. Physically, he’s an ox, and apparently a different species than most of us, who are only able to stagger through the days with as many crutches as we can cram into our mouths and noses at once.

  We three settle in the living room, beside the rather grand tree which was decorated by Marecita. Under the tree is not an abundance of presents, as you might think. We seem to have forgotten about stockings this year. Mummy wanders off to the bar.

  “Well, well,” says Gordon, taking a long velvet box from the pocket of his bathrobe. “Have you been a good girl?”

  “I have no idea how to answer that,” I say, jamming my hands in my pockets and wishing I had gone back to my bathroom for an additional line before starting this journey.

  “Oh, Caro, can you just…lighten up?” Gordon says, tossing the box at me. My reaction time is quick and I snag it out of the air before it comes anywhere close to banging me on the nose, which is where it was headed.

  Mummy is back with a Bloody Mary and drops onto the settee. I put the box on a table next to a chair and fetch presents for Mummy and Gordon, making small piles beside them. It doesn’t take long.

  “Well, then,” says Mummy.

  “I sent our young niece some things from Schwartz,” says Gordon.

  “You mean you sent one of your assistants to do it,” corrects Mummy, who is obviously not having one of her good days.

  “I
don’t think that will matter to the child,” says Gordon. “Caro, open the box.”

  He is all aglow, waiting for me. But I resist. I don’t want to follow his order, don’t want to have to give him the reaction he is looking for, insisting upon. Too easily I can write the script of what is about to happen: I will not show adequate gratitude and he will get angry. Mummy will make another six drinks, and merry fucking Christmas and to all a good night.

  So—just to shake things up—I decide to be Kayley Ann Barker for only a few minutes. I pick up the box and shoot Gordon an excited, grateful smile. The box snaps open and I see an emerald necklace, a beautiful, expensive thing, almost-but-not-quite over the top.

  I gasp.

  “Oh, Gordon,” I breathe. “It’s absolutely magnificent.” Kayley’s eyes glitter with emotion (grateful emotion) as she gets up and takes the necklace so that Gordon can put it on her.

  For a big man, six-three and wide of chest, Gordon has nimble fingers. He has no trouble with clasps and hooks, and has the necklace on in no time.

  “Amazing,” he says, looking at the emerald as it lies just barely north of my cleavage, twinkling like a Christmas light.

  I beam and twirl, my bathrobe swirling out in a circle of blue silk that goes well with the emerald, and skip over to Mummy so she can have a look.

  “Very nice,” she says, making it one hundred percent clear she does not approve.

  It is not clear, however, of which thing in particular she does not approve.

  “I wonder what Wilson got Rebecca this year?” she says, looking up at the ceiling, having forgotten her presents.

  “Next year we’ll all go to Jamaica,” says Gordon. “If it hadn’t been for this deal, we could be there now.”

  “Jamaica,” says Mummy, and we wait, but no more words come.

  “But the business has been good for my relationship with Powell. I think he’ll find a place for Wilson at his downtown office.”

  “He doesn’t want that, Gordon,” says Mummy, snapping back to life.

  “Doesn’t want to be a success like his father? What son doesn’t want that?”

  He’d be singing a different tune if he knew that son was meeting a therapist four times a week and frantically pawing through the family’s dirty laundry. Gordon thinks therapy is for sissies, among other things. Again I consider telling, and decide not to. Maybe Gordon could shut it down…but there’s a dangerous risk. As I said, Gordon’s getting in the middle of it might make Wilson even more determined.

  Impossible to know.

  Why do I care so much, you ask? Well, it’s my history too. He’s not going to be in there combing through various events and leaving me out of it. My life is my own, you understand, not something for my brother to use—to share with strangers—according to his whim.

  Did I hear you correctly? Did you just ask what I am hiding? You can just fuck right off, then. Seriously. Get out of here.

  I look around under the tree for another present for me and find only a little package from Marecita.

  Gordon and Mummy circle around each other for a while, talking about Wilson and taking jabs at each other, not really fighting but warming up, enjoying some foreplay before really tearing into it.

  Carefully I open Marecita’s present, thinking of her back in her room off the kitchen, with wrapping paper, scissors, and tape, taking the time out of her busy day to wrap this up for me. Inside is a tiny box made of balsa wood or something like it—so thin and fragile, I could crush it in my hand. I open the tiny box and dump out even tinier people, made of wire and thread. The colors are bright and tropical and I can hold the entire group in half of my palm.

  Along with the box is a small note, explaining that these are people for me to tell my problems to. I am to take them out every evening before I go to sleep, and talk to them, unloading my worries for the night. A kind of self-therapy, I suppose, and nicely private.

  Out of nowhere, like a deft burglar, Morton leaps into my mind, not as words but a life-size picture. He is so vivid I can practically smell his cologne, and his body-smell underneath the cologne. Look, I know—I only spent a few hours with him. I don’t know him, not really at all, and making him into this person I have lost—oh so terribly tragic—I know it’s ridiculous.

  He did have the best eyes, though. So ready to laugh. A good quality in a person, wouldn’t you say? But perhaps…not the most important one.

  I take the worry dolls out of their box and arrange them on my hand. Gordon and Mummy have entered the ring now, and the punches are no longer soft jabs but looking for blood, the aiming precise.

  “Wilson is going to hurt me,” I tell a tiny woman in a bright red skirt. “Though it depends on what he remembers. Maybe he won’t,” I say to an inch-tall man who is carrying a minuscule bunch of bananas. “How do you stop a person from talking?” I add in a low voice.

  They don’t answer. I put the dolls back into their balsa wood container and put on the lid. It’s going to be another night of no sleep, which should make anyone who cares about me worry for my sanity.

  20

  Wilson

  Rebecca’s rented a place in Negril—a far cry from Tryall, but much more our style. It’s just a shack, really, but painted in happy colors and three steps from the water. She’s off at yoga and I’m hanging out on the beach.

  First thing every morning, I dig myself a chair, heaping wet sand up and packing it, shaping arms, even making a drink holder. Then I cover everything but the drink holder in towels, think about using sunscreen but don’t bother, and take up my position. I look out at the calm blue water, listen to the rustle of palm fronds, hear the piping sound of somebody else’s children as they build a sandcastle at the water’s edge. After an hour or so I start feeling restless. I was hoping that once I got back on the Jamaican beach, memories would just tumble in and I could lie back and watch them like an HBO special.

  But instead I feel jumpy and discontent. Eventually one of the fellas comes over to offer me a spliff and I take him up on it, paying him out of my waterproof wallet. I like using Jamaican money because it makes me feel rich. I pay the guy fifteen hundred Jamaican dollars for a couple of joints, tuck them into the wallet for later, and settle back into my sand-chair.

  Then I change my mind and decide to light up, taking just one long deep inhalation on one of those fat suckers. It tastes all fresh and grassy. I lie back and close my eyes.

  Without any effort I can imagine Anne-Marie in front of me, showing herself off in a tiny bikini. All the guys on the beach are staring at her but she’s all mine. I pass her the joint and without any foreplay we’re doing it right on the beach in front of everyone, the guys at the snack shack are clapping and shouting, their eyes pinned to Anne-Marie’s jiggling top as she sits astride me, riding me like she is a mermaid and I am a seahorse.

  That’s the kind of crazy thing this particular blend gets me thinking about. I’m usually not so much into fantasy characters but I’m so high now that it’s like I’m lost in a cartoon movie. I’m digging it.

  “Daddy!” shouts one of the kids, “come see!”

  I think it is some kind of miracle that my child is here on the beach with me, and already old enough to be building sandcastles and calling for me. With tremendous effort, I lurch out of my sand-chair and lumber down to the water’s edge. My limbs feel disconnected from the rest of me, like my arms and legs are tentacles, and I hope the children aren’t scared by this turn of events.

  “Now that is what I call a sandcastle,” I say, and the kids—who I now realize don’t belong to me—dance around it, whooping, pleased with themselves.

  Oh Anne-Marie, if only, if only.

  A guy walks up with a bucket filled with oranges, peeled and stuck on sticks, like popsicles. I buy three of them—$500! I am so loaded—pass two to the kids and sit down next to the sandcastle, the water washing up over my legs as I chomp on the orange. It’s pretty much the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.
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br />   When we’re done, I take the chomped-on orange innards from the kids and walk over to the trashcan by the shack. It’s about fifty yards but it feels like it takes all day for me to make any progress, my tentacle-legs moving but not advancing me, like I’m going the wrong way on an escalator. Midway I stop dead in my tracks. A woman is standing at the shack’s counter, her back to me. Her rump is like a piece of ripe fruit, the thong of her bathing suit deliciously wedged between plump cheeks.

  We do a lot mindfulness at Shambhala High, a lot of practicing how to stay in the moment. And this moment is all about this girl’s ass. Everything—Rebecca, my unborn baby, my job, my fucked-up family, Sandie Shearer, even Anne-Marie—has floated off out of sight so that I can concentrate all my attention on what is in front of me. The moment feels expansive and stretched out, like me and that juicy booty are in a time warp, sailing off together away from the rest of the world.

  With Olympian effort, I get closer and closer. I reach out to take what I want, to pluck that full roundness for myself.

  “Get off me!” the woman says, whipping around at the speed of light. “Keep your hands to yourself, jerk!”

  I hear her but feel confused. Without meaning to, I dropped the orange innards and now they sit at my feet, covered in sand, looking really ugly.

  “Take a step back, buddy,” says the guy who sold me the spliffs. His voice is gentle and I nod and turn around, forgetting about the oranges and the woman’s backside and wishing for the moment that I was anywhere but in Jamaica.