by Kris Radish
“Stop!” Jessica shouts, putting her hands up. “Food. I have not eaten in hours and I had a few drinks with Justin.”
Connie wants to jump and clap her hands at the same time over Jessica’s news but, instead, she washes her face, looks in the mirror, as if she is 14 and has just had her first kiss from some short bozo on the playground, to see if she looks different, and then takes a moment to calm her fast-beating heart and change out of her shorts.
When her slips of paper fall out of the shorts pocket, her morning list of dream notes, Connie thinks about how easy it would be now to lose her way. How easy to run off with the first man she kisses, how easy to forget about the most compelling, the most important number on the list. Jessica. Number seven. Connie pulls on some slacks and leans into the mirror again and quickly adds 7½ to her list. She writes it with her mind, pins it to the top of her heart and makes certain that it sticks. This is a big night. A possible last chance. Connie looks into her own eyes one more time, takes in a huge breath, and softly says, “Yes.”
Then she hustles her oldest daughter out of the room and towards the restaurant Michael recommended.
And what a recommendation it is.
Seafood that fairly dances as it is eaten, thick homemade buttermilk rolls, a martini that seems to sing a soft jazz tune as it goes down her throat, and then another, as Jessica surprises her mother and orders a bottle of very expensive wine and they compare notes about the day. They launch into a conversation that both of them will wish for the rest of their lives they had captured on tape and film and audio and with someone who was a color-crayon artist, if such a person existed.
It starts with the kiss.
“I kissed Michael,” Connie whispers across the top of a blue-cheese–stuffed olive.
“What the hell?” Jessica whispers back across her own olive. “Mom?”
Connie closes her eyes, smiles, and says, “Oh, Jessica, it’s been so long, so very long since I felt, well, sexual, alive, attracted to something besides getting home early when I worked second shift.”
“Look, Mom, I’ve had three glasses of Chablis, one and a half martinis, and there’s a bottle of Burgundy in front of me,” Jessica said. “I may need to drink everything in sight to complete this conversation.”
Connie takes a sip and reaches out to put her hand over the top of Jessica’s hand that is resting with her fingertips on the bottom of her glass. She can feel the early weight of the drinks tiptoeing through her own blood, accelerated perhaps by her own astonishing afternoon. It is now or never and Connie is feeling suddenly more powerful than she usually does and is in no mood to accept the word “never.” She wants Jessica in her life, wants to be a part of Jessica’s life, wants to cross that rare bridge between a mother and daughter that allows them to be friends in a way that demands openness, spontaneity, and a soulful connection going way beyond weighty familial boundaries.
“Listen, kiddo,” she says, pushing away her plate and pouring them each another glass of wine. “Why should it be so hard to talk about physical emotions with your mother? I never once shied away from talking about sex with you, and I admit that my own sex life sucked.”
“It’s hard to think of a mother that way,” Jessica admits. “It’s also…easy to assume things,” she concludes uncomfortably.
“Well, shit, honey, think about it. Your father made three babies and fished. I worked and most of what I learned was from my girlfriends at Girl Scout camp, and later from reading Our Bodies, Ourselves,” Connie explains. “The sexual revolution still has not caught up with me, baby, and I’m beginning to think that truly sucks.”
Jessica smiles and squeezes her mother’s hand. She leans in just a bit, closes her eyes, shakes away thoughts of her mother tucking her into bed, reading to her the week she got the flu, grounding her for climbing in the bedroom window way past curfew one too many times. When she clears as much as she can away from her memory bank, she opens her eyes again and looks at a woman named Connie. Not her mother, but Connie Franklin Nixon.
“I’m so sorry,” Jessica says with such sadness in her voice that Connie’s breath catches in her throat. “It’s hard, even if you are my age, to think of your mother as a sexual being.”
“But isn’t that what your business is all about?”
Jessica pauses. She’s teetering on the same brink of uncertainty that her mother has been balancing on since she wrote the invisible number seven-and-a-half on her list and, for a second, before she answers her mother, she thinks about how hard and painful holding back has been. She thinks about the times she wanted to pick up the phone and call her mother, the hours she wondered what her mother would think, how Jessica would fail her again and how goddamn much she has missed so many parts of their early relationship.
Jessica finishes her second martini, moves on to the wine, and tells Connie something bold, something she has wanted to say for days, something she knows she must say before she too can move forward.
“Mom, I so want to be over this. I so want to forgive you, forgive myself, and have you be a part of my life in all the ways you have not been a part of my life,” Jessica says. She’s running her words together because if she stops she may lose courage. “I’ve missed you, Mom. And there have been a hundred times when I knew you could help me, help the business, be a part of my life, and I just could not do it.”
She goes on like a rocket. Recounting the boyfriends, the weekend in the cabin with Romney Switala, the months of sexual fulfillment, her inability to open her heart, her last date, and the tremendous idea to merge her passion for business with the notion that women must claim their sexual selves and do it every possible way and with the help of 100 Diva’s, if that’s what it takes.
Throughout the telling Connie does not blink, move her fingers off the table, lower her eyes, or think at any moment that she is going to have a heart attack. She does think that she is in the midst of one of the most remarkable moments of her life.
“Do you hate me, Mom? For all the secrets I’ve kept from you?”
“I’m Connie now, remember. Your mom is home baking bread and cinching up her chastity belt.”
“It’s a bit much, even for a hipster like you,” Jessica reminds her.
Connie is quiet for a second and decides that it really is now or never. She moves her hand to her heart, touches the very sacred place where she has placed number seven point five, and then she slowly peels back the layers of what lies below it, all the sections of her own heart, every inch.
“It’s not a bit much and your honesty right now is the greatest gift you have ever given me, Jessica,” Connie tells her daughter. “I cannot tell you how I have grieved over our relationship, how I have replayed our arguments, how I wish I could go back and change who we were, how we acted, what our lives were like.”
Jessica has occasionally imagined this conversation and to suddenly be in the middle of it is a breathtaking pause of reality. Her mother is rambling through her life, pushing through a wide barrier that has been held up by both of them, and is detailing her own version of why Diva’s is so necessary.
First the drunken guy at the party and the sad news that sex, a generation prior to Jessica’s generation, that generation which was on the cusp of the great sexual revolution, was not as widespread as some 30-somethings like to think.
“We learned most of what we knew from each other at slumber parties, from library books, and from a few consciousness-raising meetings we may have drifted into in between home economics and babysitting,” Connie explains. “Imagine my life after that—three kids coming out of me like rockets—and your father fishing and working every possible shift and where do you think the sexual revolution ended up on my priority list?”
“I never thought about it, Mom,” Jessica admits. “I never thought of you as a sexual person, as someone who sacrificed so much.”
“It is what a mother does,” Connie tells her.
“Do you have any idea how many of us there ar
e, honey?” Connie whispers. “How many women have made babies and run businesses and saved lives and changed the world and who have not yet been sexually fulfilled? You think you know but I’m telling you there could be a Diva store on every corner and there still wouldn’t be enough equipment to make us all happy.”
Jessica has wine in her mouth and she cannot swallow it. She cannot move.
“Jesus, Jessica, I have no idea what I was selling in your store,” Connie admits. “I didn’t know but I did know that I loved handing one of those things to another woman and knowing that she is going to become very happy because of what she just purchased from me and it’s made me think, well, about a lot of things.”
And then, she says, Burt Reynolds came out of nowhere.
“Christ, Jessica, in the past few days my life has been flipped over and rotated as if I was a car getting an overhaul,” Connie tells her daughter, filling their glasses again. “Coming to find you, having a man tell me I turn him on, kissing like I have not kissed in so long it’s a wonder I didn’t fall off the pier.”
“He kissed you on the pier?”
“For starters.”
“Mother.”
The two women laugh. They acknowledge that coming to this moment has taken more than enough time. The sharing has created a mutual wave of forgiveness that feels like baptism, a beginning, the chance to have what both Jessica and Connie want. And there is the gentle shifting of something felt but not seen, the pages of Connie’s Sunday list of dreams changing course, turning in a new direction, blazing a new trail of unexpected chance, change, and discovery.
“We all think we know things about each other and life and we surely don’t know it all,” Connie tells Jessica. “I sure as hell have a lot to learn, especially about sex toys, dreams, and taking new chances.”
Finally Connie turns back into a mother and tells Jessica that she has been a pain in the ass to be around. Stuffy, too businesslike, afraid to let her heart lean out of the top of her dress—it’s as if she’s missing dessert every frigging day of the year.
“You are the one who should be out on the pier kissing the boys,” Connie suggests. “Honey, maybe you are really not interested in boys. It seems to me that a good portion of the women who come into your store are lesbians. Have you given this idea some thought? Have you ever thought about tracking down Romney?”
“Jesus, Mother, why don’t you just hit me over the head with a bag of rocks?”
“Listen, as long as we are getting crocked and baring it all, I’m just going to say exactly what I want to say.”
“Like that’s something new.”
“Ouch,” Connie mumbles. “Actually, I’ve pretty much bitten a hole in my lip, not just during the past two days, but way before that, if you really want to know the truth.”
For just a second Jessica imagines what it would be like to create a war zone inside the fancy restaurant and slide backwards—again. She would grab one table, tip it over and hide behind it while her mother runs to another table, drops it on its end and then starts hurling glasses and dishes at her, and long rambling insults as well.
Jessica can’t help it: she laughs.
“What the hell is so funny?”
“We are,” Jessica sputters. “We’re talking about sex, lies, shattered dreams, dreams in motion, and I just suddenly want to giggle. We don’t have to fight anymore, Mom. You’re right. I am an uptight, asexual bitch who sometimes hides behind her own sex toys because she is terrified.”
“Terrified? Of what?”
“I’m not even sure. Commitment. Finding out the truth about my own sexual orientation, giving it up to another man who has no idea how to make love to a woman. It’s as if I am on some kind of mission to save all the women of the world and the entire time I’m drowning myself.”
Oh, baby, Connie thinks. My poor, poor baby. Connie forgives Jessica then. She forgives her for being an ass, for not telling her about her dreams, for slipping away to hide behind her business desk, for shadowing the life her mother showed her as Connie waltzed through her own celibate days and nights.
Connie pushes back her chair, stands up, and walks over to put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.
“Get up and hug me,” she orders.
“Okay, Mom,” Jessica says, surrendering. “My white flag is up. I’m all yours. Save me, please save me.”
And Connie whispers into Jessica’s ear that salvation comes from within. Giddy with delight, with the waves of burning grace from her own salvation, she quietly explains to her oldest daughter that her personal penance surely must now include a very wild night in the French Quarter.
Jessica kisses her mother on the lips, finishes her drink, and the penance begins.
Saffine has the premier spot in the read-your-palm, tell-your-fortune section of the French Quarter. He/she has set up shop near St. Louis Cathedral at the edge of a gorgeous wrought-iron fence and just in front of a bar where Connie and her daughter, who is now acting like Boom-Boom Nixon and flirting like mad with men, women, and stray dogs, have purchased a couple of New Orleans Hurricanes to go as they wander throughout the Quarter totally seduced by their dinner conversation, the charm of a city gone wild, and a night that is warm, sultry, and sensuous.
Actually, everything is sensuous to Nurse Nixon and her totally uninhibited companion–daughter who is two drinks from being snookered and having the time of her life.
Before they decide to turn left or right they also decide to be responsible for five minutes and make two quick phone calls. Connie calls O’Brien, who does not answer the phone, and says, “Oh, my gawd, honey. I’m in the French Quarter about to expose my breasts with my daughter. I kissed a man. I’m horny as hell and I may never come home. Call me in the morning when I’m sober and by then I should have about twelve more stories to tell you. Bye-bye, baby.”
Boom-Boom calls Geneva, who does answer and who immediately considers getting on the next plane to Louisiana.
“Geneva, we’re going to flash people in the balconies.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me. I’ve been drinking since like three o’clock. Oh, I forgot to tell you. Everything is fixed. Dildos coming. Oh, my God. That’s a pun. Isn’t that funny?”
“Jesus, Jessica. Are you okay?”
“Oh, sure. My mom is here. Oh, guess what? She kissed the commissioner and now she has the hots for him and everyone else she sees.”
Geneva laughs. Part of her thinks whatever is happening is very, very good for uptight Jessica and the other part is just a tiny bit worried.
“Are you two all right?”
“We’re getting smashed. Having a ball. We had the most unbelievable conversation. We’ll catch the plane, don’t worry too much. Keep the skip floating. I mean the ship.”
“Don’t forget we have the women’s festival in three weeks, and there is a ton of work to do and we don’t even know yet who is going to handle the booth. So get back here.”
“Oh, Geneva, we are going to have our fortunes told. Got to go. See you tomorrow.”
Jessica lurches towards the edge of the street and scans the crowd until she makes eye contact with a fortune-teller at the very beginning of a line of men and women who have set up tables and chairs and umbrellas and signs and flying flags to try and lure customers. The fortune-tellers, readers, visionaries of the future have a rich history in New Orleans. They jockey for positions along the edge of this city park every single night and day of the year.
“Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother,” Jessica shouts, starting to run down the lovely brick courtyard adjacent to Jackson Square. “She’s the one. Look at her. At least I think it’s a her. This is perfect.”
Connie, not as buzzed as Boom-Boom, catches her arm and says, “Well, this is perfect for you now that you are in this state of hetero–homo limbo. Let’s do this. How fun could this be?”
Lots of fun. More fun than they will even be able to describe the next day, a month later, or next Eas
ter. They sit on rainbow-striped lawn chairs and look into the ravishing blue eyes of Saffine who tells them in two seconds that she’s working hard so she can finish her sex-change operation. Connie and Jessica turn to each other, say “perfect” at the exact same moment, and then put their hands on a deck of well-worn tarot cards and prepare to hear their futures while sipping on their Hurricanes.
Connie holds her breath and whirls herself back to Indiana for a moment behind her closed eyes while Saffine shuffles the cards, crosses her long legs, pulls on the neckline of her off-white t-shirt, and asks them if she can smoke. Jessica talks about the cards, engages Saffine in some pre–fortune-telling conversation, and Connie wonders if she ever imagined this moment.
Did she?
Did she imagine one night, one lovely Sunday night, tucked away in her room, rocking away while she worked on her Sunday list of dreams, that one day she would be three sheets to the wind, sitting in a lawn chair in the very heart of the French Quarter with her drunken daughter who sells whips and feathers so that people can play with each other’s bodies? Did she imagine that she would have confessed her deepest secrets, her abandoned longing for lust and love and passion, to her daughter? Her own daughter? Did she even think of writing this in her list of dreams? Did she, could she have wished herself to this sultry spot, a lingering kiss plastered to her psyche and a longing for something more that started at the tiny spot below her knees and wound its way through her loins, past her stomach, through her heart and lodged itself right in the front part of her brain and made it so she could think of nothing else?
Did she imagine that the discovery of a box hidden among the debris piled in her garage would parachute her into an adventure that seems to be expanding and multiplying every single second of every day?
The travel. The daughter. The man. The expanse of time. The swift turn in a path that she thought she had already paved and planted and then trimmed to fit dreams that had cascaded through her whirling life for all those years. Years and years that often belonged to everyone, so it seemed, but herself.