Holly and Her Naughty eReader

by Julianne Spencer

  “But…you kissed him.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think he was planning on things going there, but I have to confess that I was,” said Vivian proudly. “The minute I heard he was available I pounced on that shit. I called him up and offered my shoulder to cry on. We started having regular meetups at the Starbucks on Central. One thing led to another, and when the time was right, I asked him to move in. He gets a year as my roommate while his family figures out I’m more than a rebound girlfriend. Then I’m closing this deal.”

  “Is that so?” I said.

  “Hell yeah it is,” said Vivian. “Max is a real find and I intend to keep him. His first wife was a grade-A screeching banshee bitch and he was lucky to get away from her. I’ve let too many good men pass me by because I was focused on my career. This one’s mine.”

  “Well alright then,” I said, thinking I’d keep my own story about Max Brody and a solo afternoon at the ice skating rink to myself.

  “You’re judging me,” Vivian said. “I can tell.”

  “I promise you I’m not,” I said. “I think it’s all good, and even if I didn’t, I’m not in a position to be judging anyone.”

  Vivian took a swig from her water glass. She stared off into space for a second, then she said, “Do you ever feel like the women of our generation got duped?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Think about it, Holly. You and I both graduated near the top of the class. We had the whole world telling us we could do anything we wanted so long as we played by the rules, and what are the rules?”

  “I have no idea what the rules are. Maybe I’d be doing better if I did.”

  “The rules are: go to college, get good grades, go to grad school, get a good job, don’t date a loser, and don’t get knocked up,” Vivian said.

  “Good to know,” I said. “I almost nailed all of them. Unfortunately, I messed up on the don’t date a loser part.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered, Holly. It’s all a lie. You and I and all our peers are living the dreams of our mothers. They saw themselves as crusaders for women’s rights, as guardians of the feminine mystique, and drilled into us that the world was ours to have so long as we didn’t let some selfish, lazy, evil man take it away. They saw their own marriages and children as shackles that held them down and were certain that we, their daughters, needed to put our careers first to avoid their mistakes.”

  I thought about my own mother, who did in fact marry a selfish, lazy, evil man, and spent the better part of her adult life recovering from that mistake.

  “But they didn’t think it through,” Vivian continued. “I did exactly what my mother wanted. I got a degree in French literature, I went to law school, I clerked for a federal judge, I make 80 grand a year, and I’m on pace to become full partner by the time I’m forty.”

  “Wow. Eighty grand?”

  “A third of it goes to the student loans,” Vivian said. “Debt slavery is part of the lie.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, thinking of my own monthly bit of servitude to the bank.

  “But here’s the thing. I followed the path to a tee and I’ve made it to the end only to find that it’s a lonely, miserable place. Our mothers were wrong. Without even realizing it, I traded my mom’s burden for my dad’s. Instead of being trapped in a marriage, I’m trapped in a career. It sucks, Holly! I hate my job!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Couldn’t you work someplace else?”

  “Nothing close to the salary I’m making now,” Vivian said. “And I need that salary to pay down my debt and then rebuild my life. That’s my new goal. Complete financial independence by the time I’m forty-five. I’m gonna be ruthless about it. Max and I will stay in this house, have our kids here, be debt-free, and build a monstrous savings account. Before the kids get to high school I’m retiring. Max can keep working for as long as he wants, but I think that with some hard work and prudence I can spring free by the time I’m forty.”

  “Wow, so you’ve already got a whole life with Max all planned out,” I said. The same feelings of being lost and left out that plagued me at the reunion were starting to return. While I had been off in Dallas with the sort of selfish, evil man that Vivian seemed to think was a myth, my friends in Albuquerque were getting married, having children, getting divorced, and getting back together in new combinations. The idea that Vivian and Max were a couple now, the envy and sadness it made me feel—it was so…high school.

  “It sounds like a great plan,” I said.

  “Max needs to get a better job, of course,” Vivian said. “Right now he’s a telemarketer. I’m helping him find something better.”

  I imagined Max on the phone, trying to sell credit cards or insurance or whatever. It didn’t seem like him at all.

  “You know, I used to…”

  I was about to come clean about the big crush I had on Max in high school, but there was no need. Max could tell his own side of the story to Vivian if he wanted to. It wasn’t my business anymore.

  “Used to what?” Vivian said.

  “I used to be really nasty to telemarketers,” I said. “Now I try to be pleasant because I feel so bad for them.”

  “Max told me the most courteous thing you can do to a telemarketer is hang up,” said Vivian. “That way he doesn’t spend any extra time on the phone with someone who isn’t going to make him any money.”

  “Interesting,” I said, suddenly feeling a wave of pity for Max. The Max I remembered from high school wasn’t meant to be in sales. He was a quiet, unassuming guy who was too nice to push products on people who didn’t need them.

  With pity for Max came a wave of other emotions. I remembered how crazy I was about him, especially in that final semester of senior year. I thought about a fun night out under the stars with the astronomy class, when I just knew that something was about to happen. Then I pictured us slow-dancing together at Clarissa’s graduation party. I remembered exchanging phone numbers with him.

  Now it was all getting churned together with wine and vodka sours and gin and tonics and pancakes and I was losing control of my emotions. I remembered the daydream I had when I was eighteen, the letter I wrote to my future self…

  Here I was. My future self had arrived. 28-year-old Holly was now. Was she everything eighteen-year-old Holly had dreamed her to be?

  Hardly. There was no way teenage Holly would be proud of what happened tonight. I had wallowed in self-pity at the reunion, gotten drunk as a skunk, made a fool of myself, and somehow ended up in Vivian Halloway’s house, stuffing pancakes down my gullet at three in the morning while the man who dissed me ten years ago slept down the hall, apparently headed into a marriage with Moongirl.

  And my Kindle was broken!

  Unable to control it, I sensed a storm surge of sadness roaring in. Irrational, disproportional, batshit crazy sadness was going to be the next iteration of my drunkenness. Tears welled up in my eyes, and for some ridiculous reason (or lack thereof), I grabbed my purse and started rifling through it until I found my broken Kindle, which I pulled out and put on the table.

  “What’s that, one of those Kindle Fire things?” Vivian said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I dropped it at the airport. And now it’s….it’s..”

  “W’oh, Sweetie, are you crying?” Vivian said.

  “I can’t help it,” I moaned, the tears now flowing down my cheeks. “All my old friends have their lives in order and you’re this high-powered attorney with a plan to retire and I’m on the path to old maid and my Kindle is broken!”

  “Oh, come here,” Vivian said, leaving her chair and coming to hug me. Feeling drunk and pathetic, or maybe I should say, knowing full well that I was drunk and pathetic, I buried my face in Vivian’s chest, let her hold me tight, and started to sob.

  “You know that everybody at the reunion tonight is as miserable as we are, right?” Vivian said.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, pulling myself up straight. I wiped my cheeks with m
y hands and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. This is stupid. I came here to have fun.”

  “Yes you did,” Vivian said. “But more than that, you came here to find yourself.”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a laugh. “Did I?”

  “Of course you did,” Vivian said with confidence. “Come with me.”

  With one hand, she helped me up from my chair. With the other, she grabbed my broken Kindle. “I know something that will make you feel better.”

  Vivian led me out of the kitchen, down the hall, and to a stairwell behind the laundry room.

  “I love the basement in this house,” she said. “There’s a special kind of energy down there.”

  She led me down the stairs, hitting light switches along the way. We arrived in a large room that reminded me of the Moongirl I used to know. This was the abode of the Wiccan goth girl from high school, not the lawyer who showed up at the reunion.

  There was a medieval-looking iron lattice that hung on one wall. On the other wall hung a huge oil painting of a woman fighting a dragon. There was a tall bookcase holding titles about herbal medicine, the history of witchcraft, and the entire Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. There were low shelves all around that held candles of all sizes and colors, and glass art, and crystals, and vials with herbs and powders.

  And in the center of it all stood a short table made out of a petrified tree stump.

  “What a fabulous room,” I said.

  “It’s my special space,” Vivian said. “I’m a very spiritual person, but I keep that part of my life confined to this room. My associates at the law firm are the type of people who wouldn’t have much patience for witchcraft.”

  I stepped further inside, going to the tree stump and running my fingers along its smooth, shiny surface.

  “I bought that stump from a shaman in Taos,” Vivian said. “In life, it was a majestic cottonwood tree that lived on the burial ground of his ancestors. I knew right away there was a strong spiritual power to that stump. Can you feel it?”

  I shook my head.

  Vivian went to a shelf in the corner of the room and grabbed an armful of candles. She took the candles to the stump and set them on top.

  “Sit right here,” she said, pointing to a spot on the floor next to the stump.

  “We’re not going to summon a ghost or something, are we?” I said.

  She smiled at me. “Relax,” she said. “We’re just going to do a little ceremony to help you feel better.”

  I sat cross-legged on the floor next to the stump. Vivian grabbed a box of matches off the shelf and proceeded to light the candles.

  “I’ve arranged these candles to align with the five points of the Raji-Shanna,” she said.

  “The Raji-Shanna?”

  “The Raji-Shanna’s all around us,” Vivian said. “It’s the spirit of all living things.”

  “You sound like Yoda,” I said.

  Vivian smiled and shook her head at me. “Open your mind, Holly. You have lost your connection with the spirit. That’s why you’re sad. We’re going to help you reconnect. Plus we’re going to feel silky smooth once I get my goods out.”

  “Your goods?”

  Vivan made another trip to the shelf. This time she grabbed a glass ashtray full of what looked like lumps of brown clay. She put it in the middle of the table and lit one of the lumps with a match.It smoldered and smoked, and ignited the other lumps, making the ash tray into a little cauldron of embers and smoke.

  “Holy stink, Batman,” I said, as the first wave of smoke hit my nostrils. “That’s so…”

  “Sweet, I know. It’s a very sweet smell,” Vivian said. “Might be the sweetest smell on the earth. And it’s good for you. Lean a bit closer and take a big whiff. Very good for your lungs.”

  I did as Vivian asked, but the pungent smoke made my nose tickle and I turned away in a fit of coughing.

  Vivian laughed at me. “Your body’s not used to it yet,” she said. “The same thing happened to me the first time.”

  “What is this stuff, Viv?” I said between coughs.

  “Medicine,” Vivian said. “Medicine for your soul. Take another breath of it.”

  I inhaled more slowly this time, breathing in the smoke through my nose. As it filled my lungs, I felt a calm come over me, and when I exhaled, I could practically see the tension of my body float away in the mist.

  “Oh wow,” I said. “Oh….oh…wow.”

  Even as my butt stayed in place on the floor, I felt as if my body was taking flight, like I was lighter than air and might soar up to the ceiling.

  Vivian handed me my broken Kindle.

  “Hold onto this during the ceremony,” she said. “It represents the broken part of your spirit. You’ve attached yourself to the material world, so you feel lost when one of your objects doesn’t work. We’re going to break the bond between you and your possessions, so you can remake that bond with your own soul instead. When the time comes, I will ask you to set the Kindle aside.”

  Her words danced and played in my ears like music. I was too entranced with the sound of them to respond, but I took the Kindle from Vivian and held it in my lap.

  Vivian sat on the floor next to me and lifted her hands like a priest at the altar.

  “Water of life, river of healing,” Vivian said. “To you we give our spirit nay.”

  “Our spirit nay?” I said.

  “Hush now,” Vivian said.

  “Ok, sorry.”

  “Strip us of our societal garments,” Vivian continued. “And dress us anew in a gown of glory.”

  I felt like I was swimming through the air in Vivian’s basement. Whatever those smoking brown lumps were in the ash tray, they were more than ‘medicine for my soul.’

  I saw splashes of beautiful bright color all around me.

  “Like flowers,” I whispered. “I’m a child in a field of tulips.”

  I can’t say for sure—my memories of the ceremony are suspect--but I think at this point I stood up and started dancing around the living room with my Kindle, as if I were Ginger Rogers and it was Fred Astaire. What follows is my best recollection of what happened, but I don’t doubt that I’m leaving a few embarrassing details out.

  “Giver of dreams, we call on you,” Vivian said. “We open our hearts to your guidance. Make our souls one with our loving mother earth, our caring father time.”

  I might have whinnied like a horse at this point.

  “Our spirit Neeeiiigghhhh!”

  I couldn’t help it. What the hell does Our spirit nay mean?

  “We reject the shackles of a false world, freeing ourselves to follow the course of the moon and sun,” Vivian said.

  “We follow the course, of course, of course,” I sang, following it up with another horse-like, “Naaaayyyyy….”

  “Spirit of dreams, infect our souls!” Vivian shouted.

  “But no one can talk to a horse, of course.”

  “And make us one with fire, water, earth, and air.”

  “That is of course unless the horse.”

  “We pray for your guidance, and invite you to visit us.”

  “Is the famous Mr. Ed!”

  “Make us whole, Dream Spirit!”

  “Wiiiilllllburrrrr…..” I shouted, doing my best Mr. Ed impression.

  “Now, Holly, toss your Kindle aside to symbolize your freedom from material possessions,” Vivian commanded.

  Thinking, what the hell it’s already broken, I threw my poor Kindle like a Frisbee, and laughed when it crashed into the wall.

  “She is free!” Vivian cried. “We are free from the shackles of our materialist prison. Come, Dream Spirit! We invite you into our hearts!”

  “Yes, come into our hearts, spirit Naaaayyyy,” I said. “My barn door is open!”

  The last thing I remember is galloping around the stump like a horse before falling to the floor in a fit of laughter.

  Chapter 5

  I woke up on Vivian’s couch at 10:30 in
the morning. A splitting headache, an upset stomach, confusion about what happened and where I was…nothing I didn’t deserve. I felt lucky that I never ended up in the bathroom praying to the porcelain god.

  Speaking of Max, he was meandering around the house that morning. Vivian was gone. She had left me a note saying she had to do some work at the office, but to make myself at home. With Max roaming around in sweat pants and flip flops, I decided my better option was to get out.

  Max saw me putting my shoes on and said, “You’ll have to call a cab if you want to drive anywhere. That, or brave your way on the bus. Vivian took my car into work. You and I are stranded here.”

  Oh yeah. We were too drunk to drive last night. I left my rental car at the reunion, and Vivian left hers downtown.

  I pulled the keys to my rental out of my purse, as if they had the power to bring the car all the way across town.

  “I’m so sorry, Max,” I said. “I didn’t mean to disrupt your Sunday with our antics.”

  “No problem at all. I’m glad you guys had fun.”

  He spoke in a relaxed tone, as if there was nothing awkward about being in the room with me, the girl he stood up ten years ago. I followed his lead.

  “Why weren’t you there?” I asked.

  “You mean at the reunion?” Max said.

  I nodded, realizing my question could easily have meant why weren’t you at the ice skating rink that day. Score one for me with the double entendre.

  “I probably should have gone,” Max said. “It’s just…I got divorced not too long ago. It hasn’t been a friendly split. My ex-wife and I shared a lot of the same friends, including a lot of people who would have been at the reunion last night.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  A perfect silence fell upon us. Then we were looking at each other and waiting. I got the feeling he had something he wanted to say. Say it, Max, I thought. Tell me you’re sorry about standing me up. I’ll tell you it’s okay. We’ll both feel better.

  “So anyway,” Max said. “You’re welcome to stay. Vivian won’t work all day. I imagine she doesn’t feel any better than you do.”

  I sighed. Clearly Max didn’t care about our missed date as much as I did. He probably didn’t even remember.