by Kent, Julia
“You got your aide hours?” Darla sputtered. Aide hours?
“Yep. Fifteen a week. Paid for by the state, and I can hire who I want. Guess who is coming to work for me?”
“Who?” Darla shook her head over and over while Cathy reached for a cigarette case. Man, I hadn’t seen one of those since I was a little kid and Grandma Connor still smoked. It was a cheap beige vinyl case and looked like a freakishly elongated change purse. She slid a cigarette out and pinched it between her lips, lighting it with a neon-green lighter in the outer pocket of the case.
“Jane!” Cathy took a long drag off the newly-lit cherried cigarette, her eyes glued to Darla to catch her reaction.
“Jane?”
“She got her CNA a few months ago and needs a job. I talked to her today – always liked her, Darla, and I still don’t understand why you don’t hang out with her more.”
“It’s not my fault I – ”
“Wait. Wait,” I said, holding my hands out in a gesture that stopped them both. “What are aide hours?”
Cathy took a long drag and blew perfect “O” smoke rings away from me. Transfixed, my eyes glommed on to them as she explained. “I lost my foot eighteen years ago, Trevor. I have diabetes. I’ve spent years on disability and I have some issues that require medical care and daily assistance. Darla’s been helping me for years, unpaid.”
“The state just approved Mama to have someone come here and do all that, now. And Jane was my best friend – ”
“Is your best friend,” Cathy corrected.
“Whatever.”
“Is, Darla Jo. Just because you can’t stand that asshole she married – ”
“Mama!” Darla seemed shocked to hear the profanity coming from her mom’s mouth.
I decided they needed to finish this in private, so I slipped out as I heard Cathy say, “Besides, I won a grand prize, Darla! A year’s worth of laundry detergent from…”
Joe
The engine roared to life as Mike conjured magic and made my BMW start. I loved Mike. Mike was my new best friend right now, and Trevor could go suck santorum out of a porn star’s ass for all I cared right now. Motherfucker. He sabotaged my car and we both knew it.
And I loved that crazy asshole for it.
He walked down off the trailer’s porch, stepping tentatively to make sure he didn’t crash through, and as he approached the now-running car I trotted to him and threw my arms around him in a big hug.
“Asshole,” I said. “You broke my car, didn’t you?”
“Just disabled it,” he said.
“Thank you,” I whispered. I really meant it, too, much to my great shock. I fucking meant it. We stood there in the dark, the moon shining a bit of light on us, Mike sitting in my car touching the leather seats and the controls like a teenager with his first chance to finger fuck a girl, and the three-legged kitten limped by, like some sort of superstitious symbol I couldn’t figure out.
We could leave now. Except I was way too fucked up to drive, so I said, “Good thing I rented that hotel room.”
Trevor’s eyes locked with mine as Mike turned the car off and climbed out, starting toward me. In the periphery I knew people were around, Mike’s form one of them, and I heard footsteps coming from the trailer, the lilt of Darla’s voice mixing with another woman’s. Her mother’s, perhaps. But at that split second, all I knew was the placid, powerful look that Trevor transmitted to me, a calmness and focus in him that somehow he infused in me, sending molecules from his core into mine, making me feel more centered and grounded and real than I’d ever felt. Friends for seventeen years and I’d never felt this.
All it took was a day here in the middle of flyover country and I got exactly what I needed.
Darla’s voice shook me out of my zone. “You guys OK? You’re creeping me out. What’s with the alien stare?”
“Joe just inserted my microchip and we’re calibrating,” Trevor said slowly, a taunting grin stretching his mouth.
“If ‘calibrating’ is a euphemism for something else, then I don’t want to know.” She hooked an arm around Trevor’s waist and he whispered in her ear. Tipping her head back, she laughed into the night sky.
“What’s so funny?” I asked as Mike threw the keys my way, tipped his cap, and headed into the trailer with Darla’s mom.
“He said, ‘If you want to know, come back to Joe’s hotel room’.”
“And?” I asked.
“And what?” she questioned. Her eyes were hooded by shadow and hesitation.
“What’s your answer? It’s an open invitation.” Shaken by my own courage, I let the question hang in the air and climbed into the passenger side of my car. Trevor could drive – I was still fucked up enough to know I had no business being behind the wheel, but loose enough to lower my inhibitions and propose something I didn’t even have the vocabulary to explain.
Muffled voices came through the window until Trevor opened his door, threw his body in, slammed the door and started the car. A few seconds of pause, and then we backed out slowly, the car’s beams lighting a wide radius of the road, small critters scampering off as we drove slowly down the rutted driveway.
“What did she say?” I asked, unable to contain myself. I felt free and easy and ready for whatever life threw my way and hoped Darla was one of those things.
“She gave me a kiss and said that if we see her, we see her. And if not, don’t take it personal.”
“Personally. Not personal.”
“I know that. Just relaying what she said.” Trevor handled the car like a pro, and as we drove away I realized we could just head straight home. I didn’t leave anything important in that room. Not one fucking thing. All of this could be a joke we told months from now, a goofy story we embellished, making fun of the toothless rednecks who took Trevor in, turning them into a caricature, a narrative device to make us seem smarter and more sophisticated, reinforcing stereotypes and mocking our own transgressions with a lovely classist twist.
And one day ago I’d have done just that.
Not now.
Chapter Ten
Darla
I watched the red tail lights disappear as Trevor and Joe drove away. Their tires kicked up dust clouds, and a pale moon shone through the tree branches, dappling my exposed arm skin. The whole scene felt eerie and mysterious, their retreat like some sort of condemnation for an act I was too scared to commit.
Because it was.
Why did I let them go? In the moment, saying “maybe” seemed like the best option, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs I thought it would break free and climb down Trevor’s golden throat, trying to beat in sync with him deep inside him. Joe wouldn’t even look at me, and I knew it wasn’t for the wrong reasons.
Oh, no – it was for all the very, very right reasons. Which happened to be very, very naughty.
Could this really be happening to me? Me? Darla Josephine Jennings, the girl who tried and failed to make a go of college, who showed up faithfully at the gas station with a smile and a smart-ass comment, who was dependable and who lived too much in her head and who thought she was a little too different to really fit in here, but who had to find private outlets for all that?
Everyone in town knew me. I knew everyone in town, too. Not a day went by that I didn’t see someone I’d known since kindergarten, or a teacher, or a librarian, or the guy who fixed our broken furnace. If I carried grudges, I’d never talk to half the people I ran into on a daily basis – so I couldn’t hold grudges, living here. Staying in one place meant finding ways to get around what you really thought and felt and letting go enough to get through the day with some level of harmony.
Trevor and Joe probably knew that in their home town. Maybe not. It sounded so…cold. Relentless. Calculated and stifling. A different kind of co
nformity, but still – in so many ways, the same.
The three of us, though, didn’t conform to anything. Not as a…threesome. God, even thinking the word seemed so sinful, so abnormal, so filthy. Three people together. At the same time.
No one was around, so I sat on the hood of my car and let the night air wash over me, my mind giving me permission to think this through without judgment, pushing aside my knee-jerk reaction to label even the consideration of the thought to be a bad action. Who planted these judgments in my mind? Mama sure never said, “And by the way, Darla, don’t ever do two men at once. It’s bad and you’ll be a slut forever and your hoo haw will turn purple and fall off.”
No one had ever said that – least of all Mama, whose entire talk about sex with me had been to give me directions to Planned Parenthood when I was sixteen and to tell me my virginity was something best not handed over in the back of a car. Too bad she was a year late.
Yet there it was, the all-pervasive feeling that I couldn’t even think about Trevor and Joe at the same time.
Fuck that! My mind was my own. I could think whatever I wanted. Didn’t mean I had to act on it. If Mormon men could have more than one wife (informally, now), why couldn’t a woman have more than one husband or man? In my Introduction to Anthropology course I’d learned there was a word for that: polyandry. It was extremely rare and mostly done in African societies, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in rare cases.
The two men and one woman thing, I mean. Not the marriage part.
Mama used to read romance novels, before she found sweepstakes. Every month a new book would come in the mail from Harlequin, and she’d hole up in her bedroom and read it. She called them her “reading stories,” to separate them from her other stories – soap operas – which she also used to enjoy. Money got tight and she had to quit the book clubs, but her room was still filled with those old Harlequins, and nowadays she entered some contests to get free romance novels.
When I was thirteen or so I started reading them, too, and they were great escapes, entire worlds that were so foreign to me – with men who were ranchers, doctors, vets, or cops – but that helped me to see that men and women could be together and talk to each other in ways I didn’t see in my life.
And then there was one book where I learned what the word “ménage” meant. Threesome, I guessed pretty fast, as I read it. Four hands on you? Two penises? Two mouths? The woman in the story wasn’t torn about her feelings. Damn if she didn’t lap up (pun intended) every second of attention from both men. Those guys were hot, too – the cover showed abs so tight you could put a piece of coal on them and have them do 500 crunches and get a diamond.
Two men and one woman. Seemed like something in a fantasy novel, you know? Except now there was an electricity between me and Joe and Trevor, as if uptight Joe were looser, and Trevor – he certainly wanted me. He seemed OK with the fact that Joe wanted me, too. That damn kiss. Shouldn’t I regret it? Wasn’t I supposed to have some part of my conscience that told me I was breaking some moral code by kissing Joe and being caught?
And that offer. They were both in Joe’s hotel room, waiting for me to show up, extending to me an invitation to tip over an edge into an abyss. A line that, once crossed, can never, ever be uncrossed.
Was I ready for that?
“Darla Jo!” Mama’s voice called out to me. My ass burned from sitting in one spot too long, my knees propped up, wrists aching from leaning back. All my body felt a bit sore, as if the past two days had exercised me beyond my normal routine. And it had.
“I’m coming,” I answered, knowing it made no sense to shout out into the inky darkness and piss off the neighbors. Mama sure wasn’t coming down those ragged steps, either. I’d need to fix those. Before you move, a voice in my mind said. That fucking voice. It needed to shut up.
No, I don’t, it retorted. Sounded a little too much like Aunt Josie.
Mama was holding an old guitar in her hands as she sat at the table, a thin wisp of white smoke rising up from her lit cigarette, the concentrated column curving this way and that as it made its way up, dissipating into nearly nothing. A chill spread through me.
I knew that guitar. It was Daddy’s, buried in the way back of their bedroom closet, deep under his clothes and a bunch of old checks and magazines. For Mama to dig that out, she had to go to a pretty major level of effort – for her. My eyes filled with tears, because I knew what was coming next, and my heart rose in my throat, palate burning, my body so overwhelmed I was frozen in place.
“Mike told me about Trevor’s music,” she said quietly. “Said your face looked like you were watching an angel sing to you, like God sent him. And that Trevor has real talent, too.” She took a long drag off her cigarette, the cherry burning a little too bright even after her mouth left it, her hands so practiced, fingers nimble and knowing how to set it down even without having eyes on it. If nothing else, Mama was very good at the few things that made up her life: smoking, sweeping, and loss.
Tapping the top of the guitar, she rested her fingers for a fraction of a second too long on the blond wood. Her hand shook just a bit now.
“Mama, you’re shaking. Have you checked your sugars?” I asked. That wasn’t a real question, and we both knew it. I just wanted to give her an out. My brain was on fire because Mama didn’t do this. She didn’t talk about feelings or Daddy.
“No, Darla Jo.” She sighed, a long, slow sound like something was draining out of her. Something other than air. “My sugars are fine.” Now her voice was shaking, too, and so help me, God, if she started crying I would never stop.
She straightened her spine best she could and her eyes caught mine. “I want you to give this to Trevor. No use having it sit buried under all that stuff. Charlie – ” her voice choked at saying Daddy’s name. I hadn’t heard her use it in years, and it made my throat close up with salty tears, too, my eyes following suit. “Charlie always said that instruments are like people. They need to be a part of the action to be useful.”
We shared a sad smile. I didn’t want her to stop, so I kept my mouth shut. It worked.
“And Darla, he’d have been so proud of you.” Her voice broke and I just let my own tears come, my throat hitching with sobs that I struggled to keep in my nose filling as I wiped my face with my sleeve.
“He would?” Why? I wondered. Why would anyone be proud of someone like me?
“Because you have a way with people, Darla Jo. You’re a kindhearted young woman who has blossomed into someone who is always striving for more, even in hard times.” The words poured out of her as she took another long drag off her smoke. Jesus Christ, I hadn’t heard this much come out of her mouth that wasn’t about sweeping or medical issues or what was wrong with me in – hell, forever.
“And you need to give this to your boyfriend when you go visit him right now.”
Hold on. “Right now?”
“Go. You know you want to. Go with your gut.” She shook her head slowly, rolls of fat around her neck moving and twisting a bit, her eyes shining with tears that nearly spilled over. “I wish I had,” she muttered.
“What do you mean, Mama?” I asked gently, reaching out to touch her hand. She jumped a bit, as if shocked, then relaxed.
Blinking hard, she mulled over my question and I worried I’d pushed too hard. Her face closed off, and I decided if ever there was a time to push, it was now. Eighteen years of nothing wasn’t cutting it.
“Mama? I’m twenty-two and this is the most you’ve ever said about Daddy.” I squeezed her hand. It stayed limp. “Please,” I pleaded.
Closing her eyes, she reached for her cigarette and took a long drag, knowing through muscle memory where it was, never burning herself. “I knew Jeff had too much to drink that night. And I wanted to say something but I was just too damn polite. Too hesitant. Marlene can be a big
personality, you know?”
I made a snorting sound of agreement.
“No, I don’t mean like she is now. Before the accident, and her brain got hurt, she was different. Nicer. Friendly and a little crazy, but in a good way. A fun way.” Mama swallowed hard. “So I kept my opinions to myself because if I said anything, she’d have shooed it off as me being a nervous Nelly, and I didn’t want the flak.”
Whoa. I didn’t know what to say or how to react. Mama must have been carrying that guilt around for this whole time, but it’s not like it was her fault. “You couldn’t have known, Mama,” I countered.
“No. I realize that. Took me a long time, and God certainly gave me my own burden to bear,” she said, looking at her missing foot.
“God didn’t do that to punish you,” I insisted.
“He took Charlie, Darla. That’s all the punishment I needed for not following my gut.” A long drag, then she pulled a fresh one out of her cigarette case and lit it off the old cigarette’s cherry. “This foot was just a little something extra the devil threw in.”
Mama didn’t talk about God like this. Not much. Where was this crap coming from? “You really believe that?” I asked softly.
“Not really. I think it’s something I say to myself when I’m trying to throw a pity party and no one comes.” We laughed, the sound a bit tinny and forced, but better than nothing.
She inched the guitar my way. “Go. Take this and give it to him.” Mama stood and I followed suit, our bodies reaching for each other awkwardly, her hug the first I’d had in years. It felt good to be embraced, to have Mama stroking my hair and whispering, “You’re such a good girl, Darla. Now move far away and live your life.”