by C. D. Reiss
“Are you all right?”
She broadcast panic, and the rawness of her emotion sent a welling in my chest and brought moisture to my eyes. I hadn’t shed a tear of stress or worry over Jonathan because I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to show weakness in front of his family. They were all so freaking stoic. But with my mother’s tone of voice telling me that Hi, Mom. It’s me, was enough to panic her, I almost lost my shit.
And I remembered my Mom then. The things that put me over the edge. The drama. The constant, overwhelming emotional storms. It was one such storm that had led her to fling names at Kevin and me, sending me out the door permanently, with my viola forgotten in his trunk.
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I missed the rent twice.”
Silence.
“Mom?”
Sigh.
“I got an auction notice on the door.”
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to call you.” I heard the rustle of sheets on the other side of the line. I looked at my watch. It was noon and to all indications, she was still in bed. Fuck. “It wasn’t just that. There were other things. I talked to the bank. They don’t care about your problems. All they care about is money.”
“They’re banks, Mom.” I rubbed my eyes. “How long has it been since you paid the mortgage?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I should ask how you are.”
“It’s complicated. I have only a minute left. What should I do about the auction? Should I move?”
“If you want.”
“Ok, then. I’d better get going.”
“Can you come up some time? I’d like to see you.”
I cringed. I didn’t want to see her. In one sense, I knew something bad was going on out there, and whether I’d spoken to her in years or not, I was obligated to at least figure out why she wasn’t paying the mortgage. But another responsibility was the last thing I needed.
“Sure.” I tried to remove the dread from my voice.
“I’m free most days. Today, even.”
“I’ll let you know.”
In typical Los Angeles fashion, I left the call without making any definitive plans.
CHAPTER 13.
MONICA
“I hate you seeing me like this.” Jonathan’s voice had a little less gravel, but he sounded as if the effort involved in speaking was unbearable.
“Then you shouldn’t let me in here.” I wasn’t allowed to sit on the edge of the bed, so I sat in the chair next to him and put my elbows on the railing.
“I need you. Deal with it.”
“Ok, well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“You look thinner.”
“These are my skinny pants. You like them?” I was sitting. He couldn’t even see my pants.
“I can see your cheekbones.”
I touched his face, letting my thumb stroke the stubble on his chin, brushing his lip, dry yet yielding under my touch. Was it wrong to want him even there? In that horrible place with him cut open? Was it wrong to want his arms around me when he could barely lift them? I wasn’t feeling lustful, but greedy, ravenous, ardent.
He took my hand away and held it. Obviously, he wasn’t that weak.
“Let me ask you a question,” I said. “If I was in a hospital bed for a week waiting for open heart surgery, how much would you eat? How well would you sleep? I’m not complaining, I’m just saying, don’t try and deflect away from what you need by making yourself worry about me. I’m fine.”
“When I can get up—“
“You can give me the spanking I so richly deserve. Until then, I’ll be the one doing all the legwork around here.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh, I will.”
There’s a chair in your bedroom.
It has red leather cushions on the seat, back and arms. It looks antique and probably is, now that I’m thinking of it. You tied my ankles to the place where the arms met the seat. You tied me gently, stroking between my thighs, kissing my legs, but in the end, I’m naked and spread eagled, tied to your antique chair. Though your hands were gentle, the binds are tight. I can’t move.
Then you tied my hands above my head, looping the leather straps around the sconce above me. You kiss my breasts until my nipples are so hard they’re the size of dimes. You make sure I feel safe and loved. You don’t want me to be scared. I’m not scared. I’m so turned on I’m pretty sure I’d come if you breathed on me.
Then you undress. You do it slowly. Not sexy and camp. But methodical. You put your things away, spend a minute in the bathroom. You don’t let me speak. You threaten to gag me if I make another joke. You need control over me. This is how you feel safe.
So I wait. My cunt is getting wetter every second. I feel it dripping down the crack of my ass. Then you’re naked, and magnificent. Jonathan, darling you are utterly spectacular. But you don’t want to hear that.
You look at me. Your eyes eat me alive. I feel you between my legs, even though you’re half a room away. If I could draw you closer with my desire, you’d be on me. I’m hungry for you.
You step toward me and put your hands on the back of the chair, leaning over it. My arms stretch above me. You put the tip of your tongue inside my elbow, then draw your tongue down, until your lips touch my breast. You circle my nipple with your tongue, caressing it with your lips. It’s so hard. Pointing up like it wants to be millimeters closer to you. You kiss, making it wet, then release. I feel the cold air on it. It’s so sensitive, and you glance up at me like you know it. You suck it again, and release it to the cold.
Then you warm it with your mouth, and you bite.
I arch my back. I thrust my hips into you. I moan your name.
‘Behave,’ you say, pushing my chin up so I can only see the ceiling. ‘Don’t move.’
You roll the wet nipple under your fingers, then move to the other and do the same. Suck, release. Suck, release. Suck, bite.
I am on fire.
You kiss my belly, my legs, and I feel your fingers inside my thigh. You’re brushing them toward my cunt. It quivers. Then you flick my clit like it’s a crumb on your pant leg. You do it hard, and I bite my lip. It stings. Then it fills up with pleasure.
You do it again and again, while kissing inside my thighs. I’m trying not to wiggle, but everything in my body wants to arch toward you. You hurt me with your fingers, then stroke. I burn with the pain, but it only makes the pleasure more unbearable. It’s not enough to make me come.
I want to beg, but you told me not to speak.
I’d take you anyway you’d give yourself. I’d have you in my mouth, my ass. I’d crawl on the floor to have you, and to be honest, you’re barely even touching me, but you have complete control over me. Just with your fingertips.
And when you draw your tongue over my cunt, my toes, my eyes, my fingernails feel it.
Then you do that thing.
With a flick of your wrist, you undo the knots at my ankles. You stand up and tell me to get my clothes on. We’re going out.
“You are fucking with me,” he said.
“Turnabout’s fair play.”
He smiled, then caught his lips between his teeth. “It hurts when I laugh.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
He put his hand on my cheek, brushing the skin. Even sick as he was, the feel of his body on mine was electric.
“Can you stay?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“You love me.”
“My God, Jonathan. I’m crazy with loving you.”
“Feeling’s mutual. Now, what were you going to tell me?”
“I need to go see my mother. In Castaic. I’ll be back late, but I’ll come right here.” I wrinkled my nose to let him know it wasn’t a vacation away from him or his hospital room.
“Lil can drive you.”
“You bought me a car.”
“Let me take care of you. You can rest in the back. Put your feet on the seats.”
I turned and put my lips to hi
s palm. “Go to sleep, darling.”
“It’s a long drive.”
I kissed his mouth. His lips were dry, but responsive, and his face scratched mine. He put his hands on the sides of my face and pulled me close.
“You trying to shut me up?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I hate being like this.”
“You can boss me around when you’re better.”
I put my head on the mattress next to him and he stroked my hair. I watched the clouds move across the sky, humming a tune that may or may not have been Collared. When I knew he was sleeping, I slipped away.
CHAPTER 14.
MONICA
I took a white-knuckled drive up the five freeway, past all signs of civilization, past subdivision after subdivision, up a bifurcated mountain and back down it, the bestfuckingthingever drinking gas like a frat boy at a kegger. Everything was dead, flat, dry. Then it hit. Castaic. Burned dry. All the garage doors faced the street like mouths stretched into a closed grimace, and front yards that had not been flattened by concrete were neglected and brown or tamed and green, with sad blowup snowmen and fat, jolly Santas placed wherever they landed, scorched by the sun, smiling in the unforgiving landscape. Even the mountains ringing the town looked compacted under the weight of the sky.
Or maybe that was just me.
Big girl pants.
Maria Souza-Faulkner had two settings. Park, which meant she was passive, sweet and slept seventeen hours a day, and Fourth Gear, which meant she was in full on rage with an eye to wiping the world of sin. Kevin had suggested she was bipolar. I’d laughed, not because he was so wrong, but because she’d never do something as sensible as see a doctor to figure out why she was crazy. Dad had loved her through all of it, when he was around, so obviously, there was no need to fix what was functioning just fine.
The house, a one story beige box with a two car garage and a front door set back twenty feet behind it, had fallen out of repair. Dad wouldn’t have allowed it, and spent his time in the states painting, plastering and gardening. The young citrus he’d planted had a few leaves on the twiggy branches and the front lawn looked like an infield. I didn’t know how long she’d been stuck in park, but judging from the look of the place, it had been at least through the beginning of the summer.
My mother answered the door in a long polyester thing that fell over her curves in a way that was modest, but sexual at the same time. Like me, she had a body that was hard to hide, and unlike me, she kept trying. She was a Brazilian beauty my dad had met on some unholy peacetime mission. Five eleven. Early fifties. Darker skin than I’d been given, but the same dark eyes and hair. Catholic as only a South American girl can be. And that was the rub. She believed in the infallibility of the Pope and the virginity of Mary long after anyone else with a brain had moved on.
“Hi, ma.”
She hugged me warmly, and after a second, I hugged her back, but she held on longer than I thought she would. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. We’d just forgive each other. She moved out of the way and I stepped inside.
She saw the car. My immediate reaction was to make excuses for it. It was borrowed. I was returning it. I didn’t ask for it. Then I decided to shut up. I didn’t come to fight and I didn’t come to lie.
She closed the door without saying anything.
The house was hermetically sealed against the desert heat and dust, and the artificially cooled air was stale and thin. Everything was beige. Dad had hated beige, but my mother insisted, and when she insisted, she got what she wanted.
Well, everything permanent was beige. It seemed like whatever had been moved in was a color, and a bright one. African masks and Mexican blankets. A hand-carved teak partition blocked a window draped in Ikat fabric. Stacks of travel books stood in front of the stuffed bookcases. It looked like my mother had gotten the shit stamped out of her passport.
“You came,” she said.
“Yeah.” The couch had a pillow on one end with a case that matched the bed sheet balled up at the end of it. She was sleeping on it, probably regularly.
“I don’t think we can save the house,” she said.
I had a speech prepared, so I spit it out. “I didn’t come because of the house. It’s not that I can’t move or get an apartment or whatever. I just find it hard to believe you’d let the place go. I got worried about you.”
“Oh, Monya,” she said, calling me by my grandmother’s name. “All this way for nothing.” She put her hand on the doorknob.
This was her. She’d kick me out and waste away rather than admit there was a problem. And though she seemed healthy, if older, I could tell sunshine and butterflies weren’t the order of the day.
“Come on, Mom. I’m here. Make me some tea.”
Her hand slipped from the knob. She glanced out the window as she turned, to the white Jaguar in the street, as if she didn’t trust it and didn’t like it. As she walked me to the kitchen, I saw more third world knicknakery, and clean, beige rectangles spotting the walls. It wasn’t until she indicated my seat that I realized what those rectangles represented. They were where the pictures of Dad had been.
And as she put a copper pot on the stove and got out a mug with I LOST MY HEART IN BELIZE scripted across it, it all became clear. The tchotchke. The missing pictures of Dad. The depression. The multiple mortgages.
“Still waitressing?” she asked.
“Yep. You still doing the books for the church?”
“What’s his name?” she asked, not answering my question. “You didn’t buy that car on a waitresses salary.”
“I don’t make a salary. I make tips.” I paused. What kind of answer was that? That was the answer of a woman ashamed of who she was, and I’d given that up. “His name is Jonathan. I hope we’re not going to argue about it.”
“As long as it’s not that other guy. I didn’t like him.”
“Does yours have a name?”
She didn’t answer, just dicked with some floral canisters that may or may not have been full of expired tea.
“Mom, is there anyone out here you can talk to? The priest? Someone in the choir?”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Is it the rector that dumped you?”
“For the love of all that is holy, Monya. That is—“
“A totally reasonable assumption. Except for the obvious world travel that’s happening. You’re sleeping until afternoon so I know you’re not working for him. You can’t talk to anyone, and all your friends are there.”
“I don’t want to.”
The teapot whistled.
“I’ll be gone in a few hours. So you might as well tell me.”
She put the mug of hot liquid in front of me and left the room. I started to follow, but saw her open a door in the china cabinet and crouch down, rummaging through old dishes and cookbooks, until she came up with a brown paper expanding file.
I sat back down, and she slapped it in front of me.
“This is what you came for. All my paperwork. Take it. No, I don’t want to lose the house. I love that house as much as you do. If I didn’t love it, I would have sold it and kicked you to the street for being an indolent, disrespectful bitch two years ago.”
“Don’t hold back, ma. Tell me how you really feel.”
She didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t laugh and forgive me either. That was it. That was what she’d wanted to say. And it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. I didn’t get crushed under the weight of her disapproval.
But she was right. Despite my initial protestations, I wanted to save the house. I slid the folder to me.
“I’m sorry about whatever his name is,” I said. “It looks like you guys had a good time together.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
I unspooled the string from the felt disk and flipped open the envelope.
I don’t know anything about finance. Numbers only interested me insofar as they related t
o sound vibrations, but once I spread the papers across the table and stacked them into a narrative I could get my head around, one thing was abundantly clear.
My mother had blown about three quarters of a million dollars travelling the globe.
The house I lived in had been purchased for 95K in the mid nineties, and paid in full twenty years later with my dad’s life insurance. But Echo Park had been in the nascent stages of a renaissance when my parents had bought it, and since then, more and more people like Dr. Thorensen had moved in next to artists, Hispanic families and gang members.
According to a bank located in Colorado, my little house on a hill was worth six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I knew this, because my mother had cashed out every dime, and then some, piggy backing mortgages and loans. She’d attempted to squeeze almost another hundred grand in equity out of the thing when I’d had those permits opened. As if there were going to be actual improvements.
She’d bailed on her job in February. She’d been at that church since I was in high school, and had a salary good enough to make all her obligations, if barely, but without that job, it all tumbled on her. I imagined the gentleman in question was the cause of her slide.
“You’re a goddamn genius, ma.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“You know you’ll never pay this back?”
“They won’t miss it. It’s a bank.”
“It’s about four banks. Mom, Christ—“
“Mouth.”
“I can’t even get my head around what to do.” I collected the papers. I wanted to slam and bang them to illustrate my annoyance, but they only made shuffling sounds. “Can you just tell me what happened? Because you didn’t raise me to do stuff like this.”
She put her fists on her hips. “Like what?”
“Stealing. This is stealing.”
“Not if I let them have that house.”
“It’s not worth seven hundred thousand dollars.”
“The appraisers said it was, so it is. That’s what things are worth. What experts say they’re worth. People like us, we’re nothing. Our opinions don’t mean anything. And you agree. In your heart you know it. You think the house isn’t worth anything because you love it and if you love it, it’s garbage right? Well, how much would you pay for it? Huh? How much for your father’s trees? How much for the porch your father and I sat on after you were in bed?”