Louder Than Love

by Topper, Jessica

  He slowly knelt down in front of me, still clutching my hand. “No, I consider this very serious business. What are you thinking right now?”

  “I’m thinking I want to kiss you again, but I’m scared to. Maybe I could kiss you on a safe spot, like your elbow.” My giggle was a defense mechanism that sounded ridiculous and foreign to my ears. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking anywhere you kiss me could become an instant erogenous zone, Kat,” he breathed, leaning over and kissing the hollow of my neck. His lips on me felt amazing . . . but everything else felt wrong. We both reeked of hospital. Dozens of heavy metal dudes were leering down at us from every crack and crevice of the room. And like the carousel ride captured in those pictures hanging one story below, my own joy and fear were oscillating at a dizzying pace. As much as I was enjoying Adrian’s company, I felt the intense need to be alone, to absorb and reflect upon the strange events of the evening.

  “Adrian . . .” I rested my hands on his shoulders, and he nodded. He knew. I was grateful I didn’t have to say more. Standing, I pulled him up with me. “You need your rest.”

  I judged him to be about three inches taller than me, as his lips were at perfect forehead-kissing range. I chose to stand on my tiptoes and kiss his brow instead. “Good night.”

  “Sleep well, Kat.”

  In the darkness of my room, I pulled on my usual sleepwear ensemble: a pair of Pete’s plaid boxers and one of his old T-shirts. People would probably find it bizarre that I chose to keep his underwear, of all things. But when the time came, I couldn’t bear to put such an intimate and everyday item in the trash. Settling onto the low futon, I ran my hand comfortingly around the waistband of the boxers, feeling the elastic stretch under my fingers. This is so strange. I don’t know if I was talking silently to myself, or to Pete. Is it okay? It feels okay. Above me, I heard the springs of the bed sigh as they compressed under the pressure of their occupant’s body. I wondered what Adrian was wearing upstairs. Boxers or briefs?

  Jeez, stop. Go to sleep.

  Script for a Jester’s Tear

  Two rare occurrences were instantly apparent to me upon waking. Another adult was breathing under the same roof. Although Abbey was great company, I liked the notion of that. And the air was devoid of the scent of coffee. I had gotten in the habit of setting the coffeemaker on the timer each night to create the illusion of someone making coffee for me. (A bit pathetic, yes. But it got me out of bed each morning.)

  I crept into the kitchen to begin brewing, dialing Marissa on the cordless at the same time. It was 9:24 according to the clock on my Krups, so I was surprised she hadn’t called me first.

  “Um . . . he’s still here.” I quickly and quietly explained how he had missed the last train and defended my decision to house him overnight, with Marissa clucking, gasping, and good-naturedly chiding me all the while.

  “Did you—”

  I didn’t let her finish. “Of course not.” The evening had been surreal and awkward enough. Pleasantly surreal and awkward, if such a thing was possible. No need to add cheap and cliché to that as well. “Major medical trauma, remember?”

  “Guys don’t care about that. They could be on their deathbeds and still have boners.”

  “Seriously, Mariss . . . that was some scary shit. I am never going to eat shellfish again.”

  “Not if you want him to stick around,” she joked. “Look, should I keep Abbey with me then? Till after you drive him home?”

  “No, no, you’ve helped more than enough, I will think of a way to explain it to her.”

  I had enough time to take a few swigs of coffee, brush my teeth, and concoct an explanation Abbey might understand. Marissa let herself in with her key, along with Abbey and a sack full of groceries. For Marissa, food is love. She must’ve gone shopping for me in her pantry, which was perpetually stocked to the ceiling.

  “Breakfast stuff. So you can be the hostess with the mostest, darling. Where is he? Think he sleeps in the buff?” Marissa whispered that last sentence as Abbey catapulted herself into my arms. Above my child’s head, I used one hand to point a finger up and the other to draw a finger across my neck in warning to Marissa, who laughed and hightailed it back out to her minivan full of waiting kids. “Call me later!”

  “Hi, my love. Did you have a good time?” I tried to keep my voice even-keeled and on the quiet side, hoping she would follow suit. But like most four-year-olds, Abbey hadn’t quite mastered the practice of vocal volume control.

  “We watched The Lion King! Aunt Miso made POPCORN! We had a pillow fight and Joey lost a TOOTH! What’s a tooth furry?”

  “You mean tooth fairy? Well, um . . .” I hesitated. As with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I was somewhat reluctant to pass on another sugarcoated traditional rumor to add to her pile of eventual childhood letdowns. How was she supposed to accept the idea of a father who could never return, yet believe in the existence of a fat guy, a giant bunny, and a winged creature who spanned the globe year after year with the trivial tasks of stuffing stockings, hiding eggs, and hoarding teeth?

  She was already on to the next big question. “Mommy, is that a GUITAR?” She rushed over to the case Adrian had set by the front door last night. Before she could do any damage, I scooped her up and half tickled, half carried her to the couch.

  “Listen, Abb. You know how you get sick if a bee stings you?” She nodded solemnly. “Well, it turns out Adrian Graves gets sick when he eats certain things, like shrimp. But he didn’t know shrimp would make him sick until yesterday. And remember how we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Lewis in Philadelphia last year, and you got the flu?”

  “When I threw upped in the bed.” Abbey nodded, pulling her eyebrows and her mouth down to express her horror of the memory. It was a face so uncannily like one Pete used to pull, especially during the grim task of dispatching the honking huge cockroaches that would find their way into the tub of our apartment near Columbia. I was amazed at how she could pick up a trait or habit of someone she had barely had time to witness. Nature really had a stacked deck over nurture in some cases.

  “Yep, that’s right. We were supposed to leave that day, but ended up staying longer because it was a long trip home and you were too sick to travel. Well, that’s sort of what happened to Adrian yesterday . . . without the throwing up. He got so sick, I had to take him to the doctor, and now he is resting here.”

  “Is he going to get better?” Abbey wanted to know.

  “I’m sure he’s feeling much better after a good night’s rest. But why don’t we draw him a get-well card, just in case?”

  Abbey got right to work, pulling buckets of markers from the bottom drawer of the china cabinet. I unpacked Marissa’s bag of surprises in the kitchen: pancake mix, OJ, bagels and cream cheese, blueberries, eggs. Then I joined Abbey at her insistence. She was already putting the finishing touches on her picture of Adrian and his guitar, his feet pointing out sideways and floating an inch above the grass she was expertly inking at the bottom of the page. I helped myself to a piece of paper and quickly got lost in doodling rows and rows of flowers. It was a frequent activity I found quite therapeutic; it allowed me to space out while still participating. I was so engrossed that before I knew it, I heard the clocks chiming eleven and the soft tread of Adrian’s stocking feet on the attic stairs.

  “Oh hey. How’d you sleep?” I was painfully aware I was still wearing Pete’s boxers, and now I had green marker smeared up my arm. Abbey stole my thunder, though, with pink ink on her chin and a purple streak high on her left cheekbone, like eye black on a football player.

  “Adrian Graves! Come see my room!” My child was certainly no shrinking violet.

  “Slept very well, thanks.” He smiled. “Hello again, Abbey.”

  “Come on, come on!” Abbey insisted, hopping up. “I want to show you things.”

  It didn’t seem all th
at appropriate for my child to invite an adult stranger into her bedroom, but I didn’t know how to discourage her without making Adrian uncomfortable. “Just a quick look, Abb. Then let’s get our guest a cup of coffee.” I trailed them down the hall. “Or tea, if he prefers.”

  “Coffee sounds fantastic.” He ran his hand over his hair, which had taken on a mad scientist look sometime in the wee hours.

  Abbey’s room was its usual chaotic clutter of toys suspended in midplay, art projects paused pending her next creative thought. Plush bears, cats, and bunnies were strewn about, facedown on the floor as if there had been a mass murder. Plastic jeweled necklaces dripped from her dresser drawers, and her favorite purple dress-up tutu had been repurposed as a lampshade, apparently.

  “Who’s this guy?” Adrian gave a yank on the gray rubbery bat hanging from the pull-chain of her ceiling fan. Abbey had won him last weekend at Karen’s church carnival. When the parish wasn’t busy praying, they were fund-raising. Last month it was the rummage sale, then the spring carnival, and come summer, nubile church teens in their bikinis would be holding signs on Main Street enticing car owners of all denominations to come on through the lot for a car wash. Karen often volunteered, although she drew the line during frozen cookie dough sales, as the partially hydrogenated oils and artificial vanillin were against her code of ethics.

  “Matt. Matt the Bat,” Abbey christened him on the spot, laughing. “Can we write a song about him, Adrian?”

  “Certainly. He’s elastic. And fantastic!” I admired his ability to wax poetic on something as ordinary as a crappy made-in-China toy.

  Abbey hopped through the stuffed animal massacre on her way over to her art wall. “Look at all my Maxwells.” We had hung up her latest efforts earlier that week, including an endearing kitty created with tiny fingerprints of gray and black paint and a large piece made up of cotton balls on a blue background. “Maxwell in winter,” she announced, contemplating it.

  Adrian stepped over a large inflatable Shamu to inspect the wall. Abbey had begged endlessly for the useless thing during our last visit to SeaWorld, yet it had sat untouched on her floor ever since I had lugged it the thousand miles or so home. “Wow, those are something else!” he enthused, running a finger gingerly over the macaroni-and-glue Maxwell. “How long did it take you to make these, Abbey?”

  She pointed to each one as she recited the days of the week. “They do art every day at school,” I explained. “Hey, speaking of Maxwell, I have a geographic problem with him.”

  Adrian raised his brow, chuckling. “Oh really?”

  “Yeah. How did he end up in Mousehole if he is a breed native to the state of Maine?” I wanted to know. Abbey crossed her arms and waited expectantly for the answer as well. “That’s New England, not England.”

  “Well, legend has it,” Adrian began, affecting a heavily accented Cockney not unlike the narrator of the show, “our fearless feline stowed away on a ship leaving the Port of Maine as a young kitten, bound for the Motherland.” He continued in a dramatic fashion, eyes wide and lips pursed. “His presence went undetected until one day, a trail of cheese and crumbs led one passenger to discover our hero, cold, flea-ridden, and homesick inside a shipping container. This chap, a certain Mr. Bradstreet, who you may have heard of, was a detective from the infamous Scotland Yard. He took pity on poor Max, feeding him and grooming him, and once they docked, he brought him to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police to live. There, Maxwell quickly learned the art of expert sleuthing. One day, Max was out accompanying Bradstreet on a case deep in the East End, and inadvertently rescued a duck that had been sold into slave labor at Spitalfields City Farm. The duck, Mr. Quackson, was actually heir to a huge estate in Cornwall, but he had run away from home in search of a more exciting life than his posh comfortable existence. He and Maxwell forged a strong friendship and became partners in fighting crime. They left London in the capable hands of Bradstreet and Scotland Yard, choosing to settle in Mousehole, where they spend their time protecting the mice, fish, and birds who reside there from less desirable felines and, of course, from the clutches of the diabolical Dr. Loveydovey!”

  Abbey applauded, and Adrian bowed in response.

  “Okayyyyy. That was five minutes of my life I will never get back,” I teased as Abbey led the way back to the living room. “Who would’ve guessed you were a Maxwell MacGillikitty geek?”

  “Actually, the only episode I ever saw was that pilot episode. But don’t tell Abbey that!”

  Abbey had pulled out her LEGOs from under the piano bench, and Adrian joined her on the living room rug while I fetched coffee. I made an extra effort to find two matching cups and saucers. Besides my parents and my girlfriends, we so rarely had company. It was nice to make a bit of a production out of it. I set out my mom’s vintage Heisey sugar bowl and creamer, eavesdropping as they discussed who lived in the castle they were building.

  “Well, there is a princess,” Abbey drawled, loving the attention, “and a queen. The queen is the princess’s mommy. Sometimes I pretend I am a princess, and my mommy is a queen.”

  “Okay, so we’ve got the princess and the queen mum. You and your mum. And I can be”—he made a comical yet snarling face—“the ogre who lives under the bridge!”

  “No, silly, you can be the prince.”

  “I think I’d make a better jester than a prince,” Adrian admitted.

  “What’s that?”

  “A funny guy who plays music and makes up songs about the king and queen.”

  “Oh!” Abbey nodded enthusiastically. “You can definitely be the jester.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  “Coffee’s up,” I called. “Abbey, are you hungry? There’re bagels.”

  “I had one at Aunt Miso’s.”

  “And . . . ?” This was a daily exchange of ours, in pursuit of reinforcing her manners.

  “Oh yeah . . . no, thank you.” She smiled sweetly and turned to Adrian, who was picking himself up off the Persian rug. “Can you play a song . . . pleeeeease?”

  “Abbey. Let the man have his coffee.”

  “It’s okay, Kat,” he assured me, padding over to his guitar case and flipping it open. Winking at me, he slung the strap over his shoulder and began to finger-pick what I recognized as the shortest song in the Beatles’ repertoire. He harnessed his raw and raspy voice into a smooth and breathy one as the words tumbled out along with the notes.

  “I know that! ‘Her Majesty’! It’s from Abbey Road!” Abbey crowed, but didn’t look up from her growing fortress of LEGO. I didn’t dare look up, either; my face had instantly heated as he sang about love and a belly full of wine.

  Adrian sauntered over, pleased with himself, and took a long swallow of black coffee before resuming his jesterly duties. He took a seat across from me, plucking out a slower, bluesy riff. Live guitar was certainly a new sound in the walls of my house, but not unwelcome at all. He fixed his gaze solidly on me and began to sing in that husky, pack-a-day voice I found myself gravitating toward. I knew the song from the first verse; it was “The Wind Cries Mary” by Jimi Hendrix, who I had mentioned last night as one of my favorites. The significance wasn’t lost on me.

  He chose to break his stare and concentrate on his fingers hitting the chords as he sang throatily, “Somewhere a queen is weeping . . .”

  “Somewhere a king . . . has no wife,” I quietly finished, stirring my coffee and raising my eyes to finally meet his again. People talk in clichés about sparks flying, but damned if we didn’t have our own little pyrotechnic show happening right in my dining room.

  “Adrian! We didn’t finish the castle!” Abbey called.

  “How about you continue with the walls and then I will come and finish the turrets?”

  She skulked through the open entryway that separated the living and dining rooms. “Actually, they are crenellations,” she informed him befo
re stalking back out.

  While Adrian was clearly amused that such a big word could come out of such a small kid, I was not enamored with her tone. “Is someone already in need of a nap?” I countered sternly.

  Abbey scuttled woefully back in. “But . . . naps are for babies!”

  “Naps? No, naps are very rock-and-roll, Abbey.” Adrian winked at me. “Why, John Lennon was known to stay in bed for an entire week!”

  His smile sent Abbey giggling all the way to the living room and sent me blushing into my coffee mug. Sudden fantasies of stealing him away for our own weeklong stay in bed came to mind. Napping next to him, waking up to those eyes . . . Something about him got my mind racing. No longer in that foggy, incoherent way, but rather in luxurious possibilities that were long overdue.

  “Thanks for humoring her.” I hesitated, but when he looked up expectantly, I continued. “And spending some time with her.”

  “Are you kidding? She’s great. I forgot how easy it is to talk to kids. Natalie, well . . . It’s a pity she had to grow up so fast. Mostly my fault. I haven’t seen her in three years.”

  “That must be hard on you.”

  “Yes. And no. I’m afraid we mostly fight like Kilkenny cats when we’re together. It feels like it has always been that way. Like her mother raised her to be at odds with me.” He fell silent, and I didn’t know quite what to say.

  “Mommy, my stomach is crumbling.” Kudos to Abbey for coming in and lightening the mood.

  “You mean rumbling? How about some pancakes?”

  “Only if they are blueberry. Do you like blueberry?” Abbey asked Adrian.

  “Yes indeed, I am a fan of the blueberry.”

  “Then blueberry it is,” I announced, and I whipped up, thanks to Marissa, an admirable breakfast before driving Adrian to the train station and ending what had to be the weirdest twenty-four hours of my life.

  Lost in Translation

  There are a couple of things I’ve come to expect every Saturday in Lauder Lake. David Mahoney mowing his lawn before seven a.m., for example. Inevitably, whenever I would just love to sleep in, that idiot is out there before the dew dries. The farmer’s market near the train station is another. Well, since we’re up by seven a.m., we might as well hit the market! Love, love, love their roasted garlic kalamata olive bread. But the best thing about Saturdays, hands down, is sauce day at the Falzones’. Which means a big pasta dinner that evening.