Something Fierce

by Drayer, David

  But if she wanted to stay that way, she had to get back in the driver’s seat. She hadn’t lost Seth yet and if she got her shit together, she wouldn’t have to. He was meeting Mother this evening and the Kerri he loved during the weekend escapes at Dr. Jarrell’s house was either going to merge or collide with the fucked up girl she was everywhere else. It couldn’t be left to chance. There were a lot of variables here. Like Kyle, for example. If he found out about Seth and was drunk enough, Kyle might confront Seth and tell him about her little adventure with “Greg” or about that weekend in New York. Both would be a direct violation of Seth’s “open and honest” policy, that nonnegotiable, that trap.

  She didn’t want to think about this and turned up the television, but it couldn’t compete with the inward chatter so she went to the bathroom for a shower. She turned the water on full blast and made it as hot as she could stand it. Concentrating on scouring and scrubbing herself clean helped some. She needed a fresh start to this day, a redo. She went downstairs and had breakfast. She opened up a psychology book and tried to study for an upcoming test, but it was hard to focus. Maybe this was too soon for Seth to meet her mother. Rebecca was another variable. Always unpredictable. How could this not turn out to be a disaster?

  She pressed her thumbnail into the little cut on her ankle and the pain shot through her, quieting all the noise. She took a breath and remembered the only useful lesson she’d learned from her years of therapy. The only truth that worked consistently and gave her something she could use. She had Dr. Donald Ostrom to thank. It was no pearl of wisdom he’d given her but one that he’d unwittingly set her on the trail to find. The journey she didn’t even know she was on at the time began during a routine therapy session. She’d caught the young doctor trying not to notice that her skirt had crept up when she’d changed positions on the couch.

  He was a greasy-haired, unattractive fellow that hadn’t quite mastered the neutral veneer which was essential in getting people to spill their guts or unwittingly reveal themselves. She could see that he was probably more messed up than she was and not nearly as smart. Even without his preoccupation with her bare thighs, she knew he was attracted to her. She could always tell no matter how cool they played it. His desire for her was so strong that it had turned her on. She’d started addressing her sexual feelings and hidden desires over the next few meetings. Not in a brassy way, but as if she were sort of shy. Like him. Yet…a little nasty too. More and more nasty as time went on, week by week, like a very slow, mental foreplay. “Is it wrong to have those feelings?” Of course not. “Is it wrong to have those feelings for you?” she’d asked, looking into his shiny face, scarred and ruined by acne.

  They’d only fucked one time and he was so sloppy and unappreciative about it that the moment he came, she’d looked into his eyes and said, “I’m seventeen years old; my mother sent me to you for help.” In books, she’d read how the color would drain out of a character’s face, but she’d never seen it in real life until that moment. Not another word was said as she stood up, smoothed down her skirt, leaving her underwear behind on purpose, and went out the door.

  Though that was the last meeting with Dr. Ostrom, she continued seeing others for a while, amusing herself by studying a disorder and then exhibiting the signs in therapy. Watching them nod and take notes, it was all she could do not to laugh. She tired of that soon and realized how much there was to learn here about human nature. It became her secret project.

  What she learned—the pearl of wisdom she’d found—was that everyone was fucked up. Everyone. The winners in this world knew that and played accordingly, using their variety of neurosis to get what they needed or wanted, be it money, power, drugs, fame, sex…love, whatever. No matter how smart, educated, worldly, or insightful a person was, they were messed up in one way or another and if they weren’t using it to their advantage, it was, by default, being used to their disadvantage. Only an idiot looked to be cured of who she was. Kerri was not an idiot though she did make an idiotic move from time to time, like running off with a self-loathing comedian which more or less brought that phase of her life to an end, but certainly proved her point: Rant was one of the most twisted people she’d ever met but his psychosis filled comedy clubs and lured away a girl that was smart enough to have known better.

  Kerri had laid the subject of her “emotional problems” to rest with her mother shortly after she got away from Rant and moved back home. More therapy sessions were a prerequisite to getting her bedroom back and when Kerri was ready to be cured, she made sure that her mother went in with her. On that last session, they had a breakthrough. Before their hour was up, mother and daughter were embracing, crying wet spots into each other’s designer blouse, declaring their love for each other and promising to do better.

  And they did! So much so that Rebecca agreed with Kerri that they didn’t need to go back, separately or together. It was a genuine miracle! Life hadn’t been perfect since then, but Kerri had had everything pretty much under control. There were still crack-ups and panic attacks on occasion, but nothing unmanageable, nothing she couldn’t handle.

  For the most part.

  Seth called later that afternoon. “You said yellow roses are your mom’s favorite, right?”

  “I don’t think I can do this tonight, baby,” she said.

  “Sure you can,” Seth said. “I’m nervous too.”

  “She’s hated every guy I’ve brought home. If she’s in one of her moods, she can be brutal.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “You don’t know my mother. You’re too nice. She’ll make fun of that. She’ll chew you up and spit you out.”

  “I’m not afraid of your mother, Kerri. Yellow roses, right?”

  “Yes,” Kerri said, “but that’s over-doing it. She’ll see right through it.”

  “See through what?” he laughed. “I am meeting my girlfriend’s mother for the first time. I want to make a good impression; I want to show some respect. There’s nothing to see through. What you see is what it is.”

  He told her to relax, that everything would be fine, and he’d be there in an hour and a half.

  Seth, himself, was yet another variable, she realized. He was intuitive and strong-willed. Luckily, his childlike optimism edged out his intuitiveness. He didn’t believe—as she did—that there was always a secret, unspoken battle for control raging on in all relationships. Therefore, when he took that control, he did it unwittingly and so, she could usually steal it right back. He’d rolled right over her today, though. Laughing, fucking laughing, as he told her what was what.

  She went to the bathroom and threw up.

  It helped. It always did. It centered her somehow, unburdened her. She heard the garage door opening and knew it was her mother. Timmy had some kind of after-school thing going on. She wasn’t sure if his absence would help or hurt. Her mother was wiping down the counters when Kerri walked into the kitchen. “I’d think,” her mother said, not looking at her, “you’d at least want the place to look presentable. Is he late?”

  “No,” Kerri said, checking her watch. This was going to be a disaster. She was sure of it. “He’ll be here in about an hour. When he said he would be.”

  Rebecca looked at her. “Is there anything I need to know?”

  “Like what?”

  “Things that a normal person would mention but for shock effect or self-amusement, you purposely leave out. Is he obese? Is he handicapped? Is he a gang member or a towel-head?”

  “You are something else, Mother, dear,” she said, trying to laugh, trying to relax.

  “I just don’t like surprises, little girl.”

  “He’s none of the above.”

  “Okay. So what is he?”

  “Just a guy. He’s cute. He’s a writer. He teaches at Northeast.”

  “He wasn’t your teacher, was he?”

  “God, no.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “A book signing. I have a copy o
f his novel if you want to read it.”

  “How old is he?”

  This was it. The whole thing was going to blow up. They would be fighting when Seth arrived with flowers. It would be a mess. “Older than me,” she said, feeling trapped, interrogated.

  “Obviously. How much older?”

  She remembered Kat trying to guess his age when they were both students in his class. “He’s thirty,” she said.

  Her mother considered this. “Where’s he taking you?”

  “The Cleveland Orchestra.”

  “Well, la-de-dah.”

  It was part of their revised Proper Introduction Tour. They had tickets to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. “My first play was Romeo and Juliet,” Seth had told her, then added with a wink, “I saw it in high school with an English teacher that I had the hots for.” The plan was that he would pick her up at the house where he would briefly meet her mother before going out for the evening.

  Kerri went to the bathroom to get ready. She shut the door and locked it. She was anxious; she had to pull it together. She took off all of her clothes and looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung there. The bright lights were unkind and the beautiful woman she saw in the mirror at Seth’s place was gone. She felt like crying, but then was suddenly pragmatic, simply noting what she saw. Face, red and blotched. Tits, lopsided. Stomach, doughy and white. Crotch, covered in ugly, black stubble like a fungus. Legs, like sticks. Feet, as big and ungainly as a man’s. It was not much to work with, but it had been enough to get him and it would have to be enough to keep him.

  Her long, thick hair was the only thing about her reflection she didn’t find repulsive; it camouflaged a lot. She got down to business, lathering and scraping away the unsightly stubble, leaving behind clean flushed skin, as fresh and tender as a baby’s. She luxuriated in the smell of the moisturizing creams as she rubbed them over her skin. Her silk underwear made her feel sexy. Toothpaste and mouthwash freshened her breath; makeup smoothed out her complexion, filled her lips, brightened her eyes. The sleek, black dress hugged her curves and reworked her figure. The heels gave her legs shape and made her feet appear feminine and slender.

  When the job was complete, she had to admit that she looked pretty damned good: the attractive sister of the dreadful creature who stood naked under the harsh lights a short while ago.

  She reemerged from the bathroom as calm as if she had taken a little vacation and were returning to her life anew. She went downstairs to wait for Seth in the kitchen. He arrived a few minutes later coming with a bouquet of roses in each hand: yellow, for Rebecca, and white for Kerri. She had mentioned that white roses were her favorite in passing, weeks ago and when he surprised her with them, she felt her heart turn with so much love that it hurt.

  Kerri made the introductions. Her mother thanked Seth for the flowers while shooting Kerri a smile that frightened her because she couldn’t imagine what it meant. It could have been saying, “How sweet!” or “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Rebecca offered him a glass of wine and before Kerri could say they needed to get going, Seth had accepted. The bitch poured herself and Seth a glass of chardonnay without even offering Kerri a glass and Kerri knew better than to pour one herself because Mother would embarrass her by reminding her that she was not yet twenty-one, even though she’d been having a glass here and there at the house for years. Kerri put the flowers in vases while Seth commented on a wall of pictures. “I didn’t know you were an actress,” he said to Rebecca.

  “Used to be,” she said, “about a hundred years ago.”

  “Lady Macbeth,” he said, nodding at one of her favorites. “Tough role. Very complex character.”

  He was right. He could handle himself. Mother was gushing, not only because he could tell just by the picture what play it was, but that she was playing the female lead and that he knew the play well enough to talk in depth about it and especially about her role in it. Seth told a story about his own days in the theater. He’d done a fair amount of acting in college. Thank God he didn’t say how long ago this was but Kerri knew she’d better figure out some way to wrap this little powwow up before it came out. She’d heard the story before. During a production of King Lear, the actor playing Lear had had his wig knocked askew and had somehow not realized it. The gray ponytail shot straight up in the air so it looked like the troubled king was giving his most tragic monologue with a squirrel on top of his head.

  Her mother was laughing along with him, leaning toward him, her whole face smiling. Kerri could have poured herself a glass of wine now if she wanted. Mother wouldn’t even notice at this point as she was topping his story with a wardrobe malfunction from one of her last plays, but the smart move was to get them apart before Seth said the wrong thing. Besides, Kerri didn’t want to hear her mother lament—as she always did when she had the opportunity to talk about her acting days—about how she’d thrown it all away by marrying a lawyer and getting knocked-up.

  “We should get going,” Kerri said.

  Rebecca looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh, you’re right!”

  Seth shook her mother’s hand, thanked her for the wine, and told her what a pleasure it was to meet her. As he and Kerri went toward the door, Rebecca said, “Wait! You both look so nice. Let me get a picture.” She ran—yes, ran—for her camera while Seth stole a quick kiss. When she came back in, Seth and Kerri put their arms around each other. Rebecca snapped the picture and held the digital camera out in front of her to see what she got. “What a handsome couple!” she cooed, turning the small screen for them to see. “And look at my little girl!”

  They went to his SUV where he opened the door for Kerri and then proceeded around the front of the vehicle, shooting her mother a final wave. He tossed his jacket between them as he got into the driver’s seat, sending a gust of his cologne through the cold air. He didn’t say a word as he looked over his left shoulder and backed out of the driveway. Kerri didn’t need to see his face to know he was smiling. Dropping the truck into first gear and feigning exhaustion, he let out a long sigh. “Chewed me up and spit me out!”

  Kerri smacked him on the shoulder. “You are so cocky!”

  “Me? Cocky?” He grinned, moving through the gears. He was so damned cute, she thought, that she wanted to eat him up. “I’m admitting defeat. How rude she was. The way she belittled me. It was awful!”

  “Enough gloating, please,” she said, “or you’re not getting any tonight.” She settled back into the passenger seat, her body still angled toward him. “I’ve never seen her like that. You had her eating out of your hand. It was almost embarrassing.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “Seriously, I was just making conversation. You had me expecting the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “She can be.” She looked at Seth, wondering if her mother was attracted to him. Not that he was her type. She liked older, more professional sorts, like the bank president she’d been screwing long before Kerri’s father moved out: silver-haired, well-dressed, smelling of money and power. “Do you think she’s hot?”

  “Your mother? What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “Just asking. She still gets a lot of attention from men.”

  “I’m sure she does. But I was thinking of her more as your mother than…you know, evaluating her level of hotness.”

  Kerri shrugged. “She’s not that much older than you.”

  “Again, thanks for the reminder,” he said. “Based on what you told me about her, I was expecting to be hit with it right off. I wasn’t going to bring it up, of course, but I was ready to talk about it if…” He looked at her, then did a double take, his face growing concerned. “You did tell her my age, didn’t you?”

  “She asked right before you came.”

  “You didn’t tell her before that?”

  His voice had an edge to it that she hadn’t heard before. She didn’t like it. “She didn’t ask before that.”

  “Right be
fore I got there?” The way he was looking at her made her feel stupid. “That could have been a train-wreck.”

  “But it wasn’t,” she said.

  “But it could have been. Jesus, Kerri. And…she didn’t have a problem with it?”

  “No.”

  “What did she say?”

  “‘Well, la-de-dah.’”

  “What?!”

  There was that edge again. He was making her feel like a child that had done something wrong and was in big trouble. Rant used to talk to her like that and Mother still did. “That’s what she said, ‘well, la-de-dah.’”

  He was giving her a look that reminded her that he didn’t need her like she needed him. Which wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. “How could she not have a problem with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Kerri said, looking in her purse.

  “Hell, if I were in her shoes, I would have a problem with it.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you’re not my mother then. Oh, shit!” Kerri looked up from her purse. “Did I give you back the tickets?”

  “No,” Seth said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m positive. You don’t have them?”

  “No.” She continued going through her purse, checking the pockets of her jacket. “I remember you having them,” she accused.

  “Right,” he said. “And I gave them to you.”

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I think I remember them on the counter.”

  “We’ll never have time to go back and get them,” he said.

  She took out her phone and called her mother to see if they were on the counter. Her mother looked and came up empty, of course, because Kerri knew full well that the tickets were neatly tucked into her billfold. Losing them, however, got Seth off of her back and gave her room to move, to think. “Call back if you find them,” Kerri told her mother, dropping the phone on her lap and going back to her purse. “They have to be here somewhere,” she told Seth. “Keep driving. I’ll find them.”