BOUGAINVILLEA, BUNGALOW
UPCOMING FRIDAY BEFORE DINNER UNTIL SUNDAY AFTER BREAKFAST
x
M(arco)
PS: DON’T TELL ANYONE. THIS IS FOR ONLY US. TAKE THE TICKET. COME TO LOS ANGELES. I WILL PICK YOU UP @ LAX. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.
* * *
Our baby was Bougainvillea. I hadn’t named her; she’d named herself. She’d told me her name in a psychedelic purple vision-dream the night before I bled and lost her. Six months afterward, I told Marco I wanted to have an affair. I didn’t tell him this on purpose to hurt him. I was in a fugue state. Looking at Marco’s face meant looking into the face of the baby girl we had to bury. I didn’t want to look at Marco’s face anymore, but I couldn’t look away. I’d loved Marco’s face since I was a little girl. We met in elementary school. Marco Hernandez. Kendall Huff. He always sat right in front of me. I looked at the back of his head for twelve years before we were a couple.
Bougainvillea, Bungalow meant the place Marco had rented for us in California. It took me about four hours to fly there alone. I kept my promise and didn’t tell anyone. That part wasn’t hard. When our baby Bougainvillea died, I stopped talking to people as much. I didn’t have anything to say. And the way I’d previously withstood small talk although I hated it with the fire of a trillion suns? That went away too, a relief. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. I allowed myself to be as selfish as I wanted to be, and Marco did too. Our baby was born dead. We deserved quiet. We’d earned it. Marco and I would be in our house together, our home, and sometimes we wouldn’t say a word to one another. We lived like this for months. But sometimes, we talked about B and that’s what we started calling her anyway. B. Bee. It made it easier because we could imagine she wasn’t a real human we could lose. Not then, not ever. She was something else completely. A bee.
Marco told me I didn’t want to have an affair, I just wanted to feel better. We were sad together all the time, trapped in the same smothering grief coat. I asked Marco if he wanted to have an affair and he said yes and no. He said he wanted to have an affair with me. He said we could pretend to be other people because it was what people did when they experienced trauma. He told me we’d experienced trauma. And I hated assigning that word to myself, even though it was true. Trauma sounded a whole lot like something you couldn’t come back from. Like terminal and eternity.
I apologized to Marco for saying I wanted to have an affair. It wasn’t what I meant. I’d never been with anyone else and I didn’t want to be. I just wanted to feel better. I wanted to go back to a place and time where I wasn’t a mother without a baby, an oyster shell with no pearl. A place and time before I hadn’t been able to hold on to our Bee. A honeycomb with no honey. Marco got deliriously angry whenever I blamed myself for losing her. One night I was crying and wouldn’t stop saying it. That was the night I said I wanted to have an affair. The following day, Marco sent me the invitation. Bougainvillea, Bungalow. And I flew to California to meet M.
* * *
He’d texted me and asked me to wear a dress. I’d gotten a dove-gray dress and put it over black leggings. I was wearing some strappy gold sandals and a medium-sized pair of gold hoop earrings. The dress was comfortable, not sexy. I started crying about it as soon as I got into the deeply air-conditioned rental car Marco was sitting in. He was quiet and drove away from the airport until he could pull aside safely. He turned the car off and looked at me.
“I’m sorry my dress is so plain.”
“You look beautiful. And everything is different out here. We can be whoever we want to be out here. We don’t have to grieve here, Kendall. We have a weekend. One weekend a month when we can pretend.” He held up his finger.
His clothes were new and my blood flashed thinking of him going shopping alone, picking out something just for me, just for the weekend. It wasn’t something Marco would usually do, but this wasn’t Marco, this was M.
“You look handsome. You bought all new things. I love this,” I said, reaching out to touch his new tie, to let my finger slick down. “This dress isn’t sexy. I screwed this up already.”
M kissed me. M kissed me like he thought my dress was sexy, like we weren’t sad at all, like we’d never been sad. M kissed me like our baby had never died, like the letter B didn’t exist like bees didn’t exist, like the alphabet went right from A to C and every flower pollinated itself. Even the bougainvillea. We could start over in California—the oceans, mountains, and trees that didn’t stop growing even when they scraped the sky. I kept my eyes closed tight and kissed him back like I was with my husband and having my affair too. M. Marco. A familiar mystery. He wrapped his arms around me like I was all he’d ever wanted and now. Now, he finally had it. And when we stopped kissing, he took a deep breath and started the engine again and drove us to the bungalow—the bungalow dripping in bougainvillea. The sun-heat smacking my dusky skin and his too as he lifted my luggage from the back of the car and carried it inside.
* * *
M was completely different from Marco in bed. Marco was quiet and focused, tender. Sweet. M was sexy-rough and vocal about what he wanted, what he liked. I wrapped my legs around M’s waist and he held my hands over my head, locked our fingers together. Is this what you wanted? To fuck someone else? To have me fuck you like you’re someone else? I don’t want someone else. I want you, he said in the deep, breathy voice that only came out when his mouth was warm against my ear, in darkness, in bed. I could see the slinking shadows of our clothes, snaking from the bedroom door to where we lay. M had locked the door behind us and put his hand down my leggings, between my legs and told me I was sexy no matter what I wore. He loosened his tie and asked if it was okay, if I was okay and I nodded against his neck and gasped. Gasp-laughed and made a noise I was unaware of until it came out of my mouth. As if a chipmunk or some kind of squeaky animal had leapt from my stomach to my heart, careened between my lips. We stumbled to the bedroom like a four-legged monster, M behind, his finger inside me, his other hand up my shirt. And anytime I thought about our baby I squeezed my eyes together as tightly as I could and told myself I was in California and we don’t talk about death in California. Everything was different in California. We were different in California and I didn’t have to think about any of that until Sunday. It was Friday and the air smelled like oranges, like a lemon ocean. I was having an affair with M, secreted away with the flowers.
* * *
M went out to get us food, came back with sushi and hot sauces, sticky rice and slippery noodles, crispy noodles, fried egg rolls with cabbage and carrots and shredded pork. He’d put his nice clothes back on and when he returned, he changed into a new pair of white pajama bottoms. The night had turned windows-open-cool. And I told him he’d never smacked my ass hard enough when I asked him to. He surprised me by quickly dropping his chopsticks and scooping me up, putting me on the couch. Taking his time to slowly pull up the hem of my white nightgown, to let his fingers brush my skin before he smacked me. Hard. My eyes stung with tears and I took a slick of breath in.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“That’s good.”
He smacked me. And, again.
“That’s good,” I repeated.
“I’ve never done this?” he asked, smacking me again. I arched my back.
“You never want to hurt me.”
“No. I don’t,” he said, rubbing me where he’d smacked. Leaning over and kissing me where he’d smacked. Turning me over and wetting his face, devouring me while our food cooled next to us on the table.
* * *
We left California together on Sunday. When we were back home, I called him Marco when I was crying in the bathroom and needed him to bring me more toilet paper.
“And we can’t always go to California. It’s too far. We can’t afford it,” I said, sniffing.
“I’ve already planned it out. Four times a year we do California, the rest of the year we’ll go somewhere closer. We can afford it. That’s not for yo
u to worry about, it’s for me to worry about and I’m not worried about it,” he said, handing me the roll. I took it. “Listen to me. Kendall, look at me,” he said.
I looked at him. I tore off a piece of toilet paper and blew my nose. I was sitting on the edge of the sink in my underwear, crying about our baby. Crying about our life when we weren’t in California. Every other place in the world had become not-California.
“I already know where we’re going next month and you’ll love it. M will send you a letter like before…tell you where. You promise to come?” he said, touching the top of my head, letting his fingers slide down my hair. He held his hand there, holding my braid, the end.
“I promise. I’ll finish crying and then I’ll come out,” I said.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too.”
He closed the door.
* * *
I’ve caught Marco sobbing in the bathroom several times. It’s usually when he’s in the shower and he thinks I won’t hear him, but I do. And that night, that’s what happened. Marco took a shower and sobbed in there like I wouldn’t hear him and I acted like I hadn’t when he came out of the bathroom. I’d made him dark, hot tea and butter cookies and we sat in the living room together afterward, with woodsy cello suites summoning twilight.
The darkness always came too soon, took me by surprise every evening, as if I were relearning everything like someone who’d been in an awful accident. All three of us had been in an awful, brutal accident. Only Marco and I had survived.
The wild Kentucky moon rose and we stepped outside together to look at it. I put my arms around his waist, his soft college sweatshirt. I was saying M, we’ll keep doing this. I can’t wait to get back to California. I want to have a baby girl and name her California, when the velvet raven mouth of night opened wide and swallowed us up again. Quenchless.
Cloud Report
I remember Bradley’s advice about not gripping the armrests so tightly. Crystal, that’s not relaxing, he’d said quietly and bright blue before smiling over at me the last time we’d flown together. We’d been headed to Chicago to visit his family.
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport to O’Hare International Airport. In-air flight time: 51 minutes.
I was newly pregnant with Evan then. That was before we’d moved from Louisville to Atlanta so Bradley could take a better job. Now Evan is three and I am leaving him for the first time. Heather’s bridal shower is a week before the wedding and I want to be there for all of it. I am her Best Girl the same way she was mine. Bradley and Evan are flying to Chicago again, to spend time with Bradley’s mother, who—finally divorced from Bradley’s dickhead father—now happily purchases matching toe ring and ankle bracelet sets. Silver stack-printed rings that say live laugh love.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to O’Hare International Airport. In-air flight time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.
They’ll drive down to meet me in Louisville in a few days. Everything is exciting, I am looking forward to everything, but I have to get through the flight first.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. In-air flight time: 57 minutes.
I let go of the armrests and touch the cool, gold locket around my neck, the photo of my big sister, Amber, still safe inside. Always. I’d put it on a couple days after she died when I was in high school and rarely took it off. Amber was forever eighteen. I am the oldest now, the only. I am thirty-seven, I am thirty-five thousand feet in the air. The photo of Bradley and Evan on my lock screen, both smiling. Bradley is frozen with one hand shielding his eyes from the sun with Evan on his hip, in his Captain America T-shirt. Evan’s hand is lifted, stuck in a spread-wide wave. He resembles his daddy incredibly, almost like I’d had nothing to do with it. Like they hadn’t needed me. I’d done all the work!
Good thing I love Bradley’s face as much as I do. His calm, brown eyes and bashful smile. How his nose comes to a pert point when it’s finished. It’s perfect. I love that Bradley has given those things to Evan, our only. And it isn’t all lost because Evan has my wild, curly hair, the underneath and edges occasionally burning red in the summer sun.
I’d been careful to pack Evan’s bag for Bradley knowing full-well that Bradley would wing things anyway, like he usually did. And I’m trying to relax about that too. I am constantly reminding myself to let go and imagining the successful Velcro-snatch of separating my intrusive worries from my pleasant thoughts. It’ll be okay if Evan wears the same pair of shorts two days in a row or if Bradley’s mom lets him have two cookies. Three, even! But, I still can’t help myself from crying a little when I click on my phone to take a look at the photo again and open my text messages. Bradley had texted me right before takeoff.
Remember the flight is short, only about an hour! You’ll be fine! We’ll be fine! Have fun! Try not to worry too much! We’ll be together soon! We love you!
Bradley had added all the exclamation points for me, to make me feel better. He’s a natural-born encourager. I wipe my tears and read his text again and when I consider gripping the armrests one more time, I hear Bradley’s voice in my head. That’s not relaxing. So I take a deep breath and confidently ask for a white wine when the flight attendant steps next to me.
“Actually, I’ll have two wines please,” I say.
The flight attendant also hands me a small, crinkly package of tissue and winks at me. She’s old-Hollywood pretty and I like looking at her.
And with my wines and my book, I’m okay. I’m better. I don’t obsessively imagine our plane bursting into flames or exploding into the colored quilt of cornfields and farmland. I don’t constantly imagine Bradley putting the yellow oxygen mask on himself first, then slipping it over Evan’s tiny head and ears. The gasping. No. Stop.
Stop! I am excited to see Heather. I haven’t seen her since Christmas! She’ll be a beautiful bride next week, marrying the person she’s always been waiting for. Heather and I lost our virginity on the same day in the same house that high school summer with those best-friend boys whose intense relationship mirrored ours. Inseparable, rascally, wild. Heather got her heart broken, but only mildly. Jamie and I had dated for a few months before breaking up and before I moved away, we’d seen each other every now and then at the grocery store, the park. One time at the pediatrician’s office, both of us smiling and speaking quietly, rocking our sleeping, feverish babies.
Jamie and I have been friends on Facebook ever since and I didn’t hate thinking about that summer afternoon on his best friend Tristan’s couch, all those summer afternoons on all those couches. My blood jumps when I think about how maybe I’ll run into Jamie when I’m back in town, how he’ll always be my forever-first and he’s not a half-bad one. Even Bradley has said that my relationship with Jamie is sweet. After Jamie I’d dated a string of assholes until I graduated from college and met Bradley, who I like to say has either burned through his asshole tendencies before meeting me or never had them in the first place, which always makes him smile.
When we were in high school, Heather and I would kiss before we went to sleep at night. Real kisses, with tongue and we never told anyone about it. I think even telling Bradley would be a small crease of betrayal, but I do wonder what he’d think about it if he knew. Although not like we used to, Heather and I still kiss on the mouth when we see one another, because it’s how we’ve always been. We love each other so much; kissing each other makes sense. We’ve always been in love with each other and it’s different than anything we’ve ever felt for a man. Not deeper, but…diagonal.
It took me forever to get pregnant, but Heather had gotten pregnant on accident. I miscarried that baby, Heather had hers and now he’s twelve. I was jealous and angry about how easy it’d been for her, but she wasn’t happy and her relationship fell apart. I spent years and years trying to get pregnant again; I lost track of how much money we spent. Now, Heather is getting married to a person who ac
tually deserves her, and I have my baby too. There is so much to celebrate! I hold this thought in my head as we soar. Every baby born grew in a woman’s womb and planes soar through the sky! Sometimes, everylittlebit of life is full of wonder.
I drink one wine and read my book—comforting, predictable domestic fiction with goodhearted people worth rooting for. I’d purposely avoided bringing along anything too thrilling or anxious, my heart and personality doing enough of that on its own. The cold wine slowly cools my hot, flickering worries.
My sister, Amber, died with her boyfriend and part of it remains a forever mystery. And I think of those two words in Lolita describing the freak accident that killed Humbert Humbert’s mother, how they’re written in parentheses—(picnic, lightning). Amber’s accident reads (car, river). My therapist likes to remind me that the trauma of losing my sister when she was a teenager, when I was a teenager, had and will continue to have far-reaching effects, but that doesn’t mean my worst worries will always come true. I’d never properly worried about something awful happening to Amber. And until it happened, nothing did. And once it did, it was over. There wasn’t even time to be scared. No prep work, no anticipation. Just the fallout—the shrapnel and scattered remains of what our family used to be, strewn about—all of us trying our best to be okay.
I am wearing my go-to travel outfit: pointy bright pink flats I ordered online after Oprah mentioned them, a light, long-sleeved tunic and leggings—all things that curb my anxiety and make me feel at home no matter where I am. I rub lavender oil on my wrists and sniff. I put on the expensive citrusy hand lotion Bradley’s mom gave me for Christmas. I reapply my tingly lipgloss and consider the hydrating overnight mask in my bag and whether or not I’ll remember to put it on after dinner and drinks with Heather. Probably not. I look at my lock screen photo, at my husband and our little boy, the rainbow lens flare in the corner, faking the sun. I pray for them like I always do. My heart—a tight fist.
So We Can Glow Page 16