Louder Than Love

by Topper, Jessica

  “I thought Daddy was your best friend, too.”

  “It’s hard to explain . . .” I started. We were running late, and the weekend had been too full of new emotions to dive into such a philosophical discussion with a four-year-old. “We always have room in our lives for more friends, right?”

  “Except for Jake Overhill. He called me stinky at school and said he isn’t my friend.” She applied a death grip to the poor little seal until he spit every last drop of water he held.

  “Well, we know you’re not stinky,” I said, kissing her damp head. “Jake must have been having a bad day.”

  “Mommy, someone is knocking.” We stopped soaping and splashing. Sure enough, I heard a light but persistent thump. Who the heck could that be? “I’ll be right back. Don’t stop singing, okay?” As long as I could hear her voice, I’d know she wasn’t drowning.

  I cinched my robe tighter and glanced at the grandfather clock in the hall. Eight forty-five. Through the front window, I glimpsed the white Underwood and Overhill delivery truck parked outside. Oh good Lord. Grant had entered the screened-in porch and was deliberately knocking slowly and steadily on the heavy wooden front door. Grumbling, I yanked it open.

  “Hey. Happy Mother’s Day.” He brandished a blooming hydrangea branch, presumably from my mom’s bushes outside. “I sold the French hunting chairs, finally!” he exclaimed, rolling his eyes upward and letting out an exaggerated whistle of relief. All prickish behavior from last night seemingly had dissolved with the rain. “You know, the oak and rattan?”

  “Mazel tov.”

  “Yesterday . . . for two grand, cha-ching!” He peered past my shoulder into the house. “I only had one on the sales floor. Your dad says the other three are in your basement. Need to deliver them today, so . . . here I am.” He spread his arms as if offering himself up to me.

  “You could’ve called first,” I said flatly. “And when did you speak to my dad?”

  “Sorry.” The word dropped from his mouth as unapologetically as the hydrangea petals dropped to the floor in his wake. “Why, is your date still here? Sleeping?” His tone was lecherous; obviously he was implying Adrian. “Called your dad this morning. Talked to your mom, too.” He grinned. “Nice chat.”

  I chose to ignore the latter comment. Any “chat” he had with my mom would no doubt end up meaning an inquisition later for me. “Do you really think anyone could sleep while Abbey is singing at the top of her lungs?” She was currently belting out “The Cat Came Back.” “I left her in the tub. So if you’ll excuse me . . .” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the basement door to indicate my consent.

  “Is it Adrian again?” Abbey wanted to know.

  “No, it’s Jake’s daddy, sweetie. He needed to pick up some of Grandpa’s chairs.” We could hear him clomping downstairs with the grace of an elephant.

  “How does he know Grandpa?” she demanded suspiciously.

  I handed her the ducky towel. “He worked with Grandpa.” I plucked her and her little seal of disapproval out of the tub. “Go get dressed. We’re late for Aunt Miso’s.”

  Back in the living room, Grant was struggling with a pair of bubble wrap–encased chairs.

  “Found two. Where’s the third?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, impatient to be rid of him. “Try upstairs.”

  He went up and soon returned carrying the third chair. “I see your brother’s still flying his heavy metal freak flag up there,” he grunted under the weight on his way down, almost missing the last step. “So . . . tell me about Cuppa Tea.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, your mate. Your bloke.” He dropped the chair with a plop, rattling the china cabinet. “He seemed a little . . . oh, I don’t know. Smooth Slim Shady. Who spends that much on wine? And how much do you know about this guy?”

  “I know he can fix a flat tire,” I tested.

  Grant picked up the chair again with fabricated nonchalance. “It’s just, well . . . Tree, your dad is like a father to me. And so I feel like you are my sister, you know? I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of.”

  “Yeah. Okay. You’re one to talk.” We stared each other down for a tense moment. “You know what? It’s Mother’s Day. Don’t harass me,” I finished, slamming the door on him.

  Queen for a Day

  I had gotten up for a four a.m. feeding on my first Mother’s Day. Foggy-brained and swollen-breasted, I had needed a moment to process why on earth two envelopes were propped up against the inside rails of Abbey’s crib. Pete had placed a card from her and a card from himself there, presumably before he went to bed. I remembered smiling in the half-lit dawn as I brought Abbey to my chest.

  I faithfully received cards from my parents and my in-laws every year since, and I reciprocated by sending my own to them. And Abbey never failed to bring home some construction-paper-and-tissue-paper creation from school in honor of the day. Today, we would fill the day with brunch at Marissa’s and the slew of people she had invited over. I was grateful for not being left at home with my memories.

  “Haha-no-hi—that’s Mother’s Day in Japanese. I Googled it!” Marissa said proudly, pushing a glass of sake and cucumber into my hand. “Rob is a sushi-making fiend in the kitchen.”

  Abbey and I followed her inside. The Falzones lived in a cute converted cottage two streets away from us and just one house away from the beach. It was a lot like my place, only two more bedrooms had been added on with an addition to the back. Marissa’s mom had found the fixer-upper for a steal eight years ago. Luckily, Rob had the patience and Marissa had the eye for decorating. It was homey and warm without being too cutesy-country. A poor gal’s MacKenzie-Childs, Marissa liked to say.

  The TV blared from the den, no doubt the men watching some sort of NBA pregame nonsense. Abbey ran to join the other kids up in the attic playroom, and I popped into the kitchen to pay my respects to Marissa’s mom, who refused to relax on her day and was insisting upon being Rob’s sous-chef.

  “Hey, Ma,” I said affectionately. “You’re all dressed up.” Dora Filletti was decked out in a pantsuit of muted gray with fancy buttons. A pair of her signature stilettos graced her tiny feet.

  “Yeah, got an open house from two to four,” she explained, flicking a piece of rice off her apron with manicured nails that rivaled her daughter’s. “No rest for the wicked.”

  “That’s why you are the number-one realtor in the tri-state area,” Rob boomed, quoting the commercial from his mother-in-law’s realty company that aired on the public access channel. “The gals are out on the deck demolishing the first round of California rolls,” he said, kissing my cheek hello as he squeezed his bamboo rolling mat.

  I took my sake and joined Karen and Leanna out on the deck.

  “No Liz?” I asked, knocking glasses with each of them.

  “Nope. Took her mom to a Broadway show.”

  Marissa joined us a few moments later, kicking up her feet on an empty chair. She toasted me with her own big glass of sake. “Where are the boys?” I asked.

  “The Nets are on tonight,” Marissa explained. “My dad no doubt has some money riding on the game. I think he’s holding Ed and Mitch hostage in the den with ESPN. Jasper too!”

  “Oh please, the only way I could convince Ed to come today was the promise of sports.” Leanna brushed wasabi like war paint across her piece of sushi. “So Tree . . . how was round three?” The girls exchanged knowing smiles, and with some nudging, they got me talking about the glorious day with Adrian.

  “Wow, bathroom sex.” Marissa high-fived me.

  “Wow, standing up sex . . . I swear, if you regress to kitchen table sex, I’m taking over your life!” Leanna warned me. Karen sat shaking her head and smiling, eyes wide with wonder. “More juicy details, please.”

  I obliged. “But what do you think is up with the oral?” I finished.
>
  Marissa shook her head. “I’ve never heard of a guy cockblocking himself! Maybe it’s a power thing?”

  “Maybe he’s too respectful of you?” Karen suggested.

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like it. For some people it’s a turn-off. Honestly,” Leanna confessed, “the thought of servicing Eddie after a long day of me doing everything and him doing nothing . . . I’m just not attracted to him like that anymore.”

  “See now, I think it’s the toilet bowl theory,” Marissa announced. “Once you move in with a guy and are reduced to cleaning his pubes off the toilet bowl, the romance and mystery are gone.”

  I burst out laughing. “So do we never clean the toilet?”

  “No, you get a cleaning woman. Or you make him clean his own bowl,” Marissa advised.

  “Somehow I don’t think hiring a maid is gonna bring the spark back for me,” Leanna said. “Even if it was a sexy French maid!”

  Karen spoke up. “You just get so tired when you have kids, you know? Mitch is always too busy, too stressed. Luckily I have Jasper to hug and kiss and snuggle. Obviously it’s not sexual, but makes up for some of the lack of physical contact.”

  I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant.

  Marissa was strangely quiet. More sushi was consumed, eventually the men came out of their sports coma to eat, and the kids stopped playing long enough to gobble up the sushi-inspired pizza rolls Rob had invented. After everyone else left, Joey, Brina, and Abbey commandeered the television. Marissa and I kicked back with the rest of the sake.

  “You’re so quiet. Is everything okay?” I asked her.

  “Yeah . . . actually, that’s just it. Everything’s great. I don’t have any of these complaints the other girls have. It’s almost creepy,” Marissa said. “I worry about them.” I understood. Leanna increasingly never had a good thing to say about her marriage—or her life, for that matter. “But you . . . you’re doing okay?” Adrian’s voice emanated from the den; the kids must’ve tuned into Maxwell MacGillikitty. “The sexy man is still entertaining you and your child?”

  “And then some.” I smiled at the thought of him. “He is great. I forgot what it’s like to have a man around the house. He changed a tire for me, and he got dirty. I miss having a guy around to kill the spiders, you know?”

  Marissa laughed, munching a sake-soaked cucumber slice. Tires and spiders aside, I was enjoying Adrian’s company; his wit and his way with Abbey melted me. And obviously we had chemistry. I wasn’t quite ready to take Marissa’s toilet bowl theory seriously, but I did wonder where the newness and novelty of this relationship was going to lead us. We had already taken several leaps in a short period of time. I thought back to the Plaza and the fountain and the order of things. Should one jump in feetfirst? Headfirst? Or heartfirst?

  Measures

  I want to tell you about my scars but it’s

  unthinkable

  I will not face

  that particular pain

  I will not pick that wound

  there are fissures

  where there were none

  before

  I want to smash it all

  down from the shelf

  and grind it into a

  flammable dust

  won’t you curve

  yourself around me

  I surrender.

  (A.G.)

  Illumination

  I was eternally grateful to Karen for talking me into yoga class. It was during my post-depressed, slightly manic phase where I was constantly in an adrenaline-pumping survival-of-the-fittest mode. I was running on the treadmill at home, spinning like mad at the Y, playing with Abbey during all of her waking hours, and leaving no time for inner peace. Karen, on the other hand, was doing baby yoga with newly born Jasper and was way blissed out. When I asked her what her secret was, she brought me to the basement of her church on a Tuesday morning. There, men and women of all ages and from all walks of life were stretching in their bare feet on thin mats. We were asked to sit and silently set our intention for the session and for the rest of the day. I begged myself for calmness, for focus, and felt a wave of well-being and self-love wash over me. I needed this.

  Now, while working through the sunflower-moonflower series of movements, it struck me. The time had come to reclaim the top half of my house. Kevin’s bedroom should become a proper guest room, a playroom, or some sort of retreat separate from the rest of the house. Or at least a place to store all the boxes currently inhabiting the first floor. I would have two hours to begin dismantling it before I had to fetch Abbey from school. I figured I could at least get the posters down and the bong out of there.

  Back at the house, I surveyed the room and started my ambitious task. Still dressed in my yoga clothes for maximum flexibility, I stood on Kev’s bed and steadied myself. Reaching both hands up, I began to gingerly peel the highest corners of the largest poster from the slanted ceiling. A spider carcass circa 1985 sifted down and practically landed in my left eye, but that was not what sent me cartwheeling off the bed with a shriek.

  Oh my freaking God.

  I had caught a close-up glimpse of Corroded Corpse’s lead guitarist.

  Adrian.

  The hair was longer, straighter, dyed jet-black with two inches of bleach on the tips. But it was definitely Adrian. His lips were twisted up and to the left with concentration, his eyes half shut in ecstasy as he wailed on his guitar: a mirror image of his expression on the bed at the Plaza as I had climbed on top of him.

  I racked my brain, trying to remember back to all the silly stage names these metal guys gave themselves . . . Ozzy, Lemmy, Nikki, Blackie. Thunderstick, King Diamond, Riff Rotten . . . and this guy was . . .

  Digger.

  The poster clung for dear life to the slanted ceiling it had considered home for the last twenty years. I hopped back up and smacked the corner back in place. Then I sat on the bed for a good long time. Finally I brought myself to grab a stack of Kevin’s albums. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, I began to pour through them. Metastasis, Corroded Corpse’s third album, shook in my hands. I remembered the album well. Back in the mideighties, it had been as commonplace in my family’s household as the Sunday comics and Lucky Charms on the breakfast table. A huge Blakean sun graced the front, black yet shining, with its rays seeping out toward the edges. Writhing souls seemed both captured and captivated by its dark light. A large white ring had worn away some of the cover art, probably from the number of times the album had been slipped in and out of the sleeve.

  I turned it over and there he was again staring out at me, this time with a snarl on his face and more eye makeup than a crying Tammy Faye Bakker. His posing made me laugh, even though I was shocked and hurt. “Digger” Graves, Lead Guitar read the caption. The other heavily made-up scowling cast of characters with him were Riff Rotten, rhythm guitar and vocals, Adam Archangel, drums, and Samson Steel, bass guitar. The song listings dripped in red down the back: “Blood Oath,” “Slaying of the Firstborn,” “Funeral,” “Queen of the Guillotine,” “Siren’s Song,” “Godforsaken,” “Spoils of War.”

  There was another picture on the inner sleeve in black-and-white—he stood naked to the waist and wielded his guitar as if he were using it to do a behind-the-neck shoulder press. A gruesome, rotting zombie tattoo ran up one side of his chest, perhaps the real reason for his reluctance to disrobe in front of me. There was the Celtic cross tattoo, but no cat paws . . . and no burns yet that I could ascertain.

  I didn’t know what to think about any of it. I was still reeling. I carried the album downstairs, picked up the phone, and then put it back down. Calling him seemed ridiculous. I needed to get a handle on my emotions. Did I have a right to even feel betrayed? He hadn’t lied. He just failed to share many truths with me. And I hadn’t exactly been wearing mine on my sleeve, either.

  I decided to call my brother
instead. I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to tell him, or to have him tell me. He was an expert on all things Corroded Corpse, even though the band had called it quits half his lifetime ago.

  No answer, but perhaps that was a good thing after all. I left a vague message before heading out the door to get Abbey. “Hey, Kev, I’m thinking of turning your old room into a guest room. Do you want me to ship your records and stuff to you? Call me.”

  I drove to school in a fog, the last few weeks swirling over my head in a storm cloud full of questions. So many of the puzzle pieces were falling into place: his initial reluctance to perform for the children, his vagueness about his job and why he had traveled so much when Natalie was young. The weird names and numbers in his cell phone. His reaction when I mentioned finding his CDs for the children attending the library program, not to mention the one he had upon entering Kevin’s room . . . it all made sense now. Had he been relieved or astounded to realize I had honestly not known who he was? How long had he been in hiding, using his middle name and staying out of the public eye?

  For every question I had, one word screamed in my head in response: RESEARCH. It took all my willpower not to just jump onto the computer once Abbey and I returned home. If there wasn’t an official Corroded Corpse Web site, there were sure to be loads of fan pages, music sites, album reviews, and years of full-text news articles to enable me to piece together the life he hadn’t made me privy to. The librarian in me burned red-faced in shame and yearned to methodically gnaw through every source out there to make up for lost time, but my heart told me to let it be . . . let it be. My heart couldn’t take the pain of learning yet another person who had touched my life and Abbey’s life didn’t really exist.

  Kevin returned my call that night, but I was too exhausted to answer it. “Hey, sis. Miss you. But if you so much as mess with any of my Corroded Corpse stuff, I’ll kill you.”

  ***

  Sleep had sharpened my memory and strengthened my resolve. I would only meet him at Strawberry Fields today to say good-bye. Throughout the night, my dreams had scoured my subconscious for those random factoids one learns about various celebrities simply by the sheer luck of living simultaneously on God’s green earth with them. I had come of age during the debut of MTV News and the rise of People magazine. Even if I hadn’t been interested in the trials and tribulations of Digger Graves, some of it had been absorbed by the osmosis of our overconcentration as teenagers on pop culture, as well as from the concentration the media devoted to burning it subliminally into our brains.