The Girl On The Half Shell

by Susan Ward

  “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  “So?”

  “Rene comes back to New York. I want Rene here. I want to stay at The Farm and have Rene here.”

  Alan frowns, that “Rene not my favorite girl” expression.

  “That’s no big deal. I’ll drive into the village early tomorrow. Call Colin. Arrange to bring her here.”

  I curl into his chest. I feel much better. I’ve given more parts of me to Alan and it feels so very right. I trace the ink on his stomach. “I think The Farm will be good for Rene.”

  * * *

  The next morning, we leave early for the village. Alan doesn’t have a car at The Farm so we take the rust bucket Jeep and that’s OK with me. All the dysfunctional will be gone, except for the Rowans, when we return from calling Colin and making the arrangements for bringing Rene upstate.

  I sit beside Alan, fighting with my hair as we whiz down the narrow country lane. He is a maniac when he drives. There is something about him always on the edge, even in his quiet moments, a certain sense that he silently rages against living and that he isn’t fully at peace within himself.

  I smile and I watch him and I say nothing. There is no radio in the rust bucket. He starts to hum quietly. I don’t think he realizes it, or what the artful lines of his face betray. He is thinking of his own regrets today. My heart squeezes and twists. When does the pain of our mistakes leave us? Maybe never. Maybe that is life, living with the pain of our mistakes.

  I stare out the window. Tears prickle my eyes. I’ve lived with my mistake for ten years and the pain hasn’t left me yet. Perhaps Alan can feel it today. Perhaps that is why he’s thinking of Molly. Perhaps that is why we are together when we really don’t make sense in any way.

  I lean into him across the center console and lay my head against his shoulder. It is in this comfortable quiet when we make the most sense to me. This beautiful guy, gifted and brilliant, too often lost inside himself. Just like me, his not so beautiful, gifted or brilliant girlfriend. Too often lost inside myself. Simultaneously opposite from and totally right with one another.

  It can be a hopeful thing to find the other perfect half of yourself, someone who gets you, someone to love and be loved by. I never expected the other perfect half of me to be Alan Manzone. He’s such a weirdo, but then I’m strange too.

  Alan stops singing in mid-verse and looks at me. “Why are you laughing?”

  I make a face. “Sometimes I just think funny thoughts. Where are we going?”

  “To use a phone.”

  “But this doesn’t look like the same way we went to the redneck bar.”

  “Back roads, Chrissie. Less traffic. Less people.”

  His eyes flash a smile toward me, but his mouth has a slightly apparent grim line. Oh, Alan, what is worrying you today?

  I sigh. Do I even want to know what is worrying him today? Nope, I don’t want to know. We feel good today. Really good.

  He pulls into a motel parking lot. The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins. I start to laugh.

  “You did say you wanted to bounce a bed in a hotel named after a Disney movie,” he murmurs, his voice very sexy.

  “How did you remember that bit of stupidity, with everything that’s gone on since we got here?”

  “I remember everything you say. Always.”

  The look in his eyes makes me shiver. I smile and hug him, trying to contain my dopey happiness over this.

  I watch him climb from the Jeep and go into the lobby. In a moment he’s back, room key in hand, grinning.

  He drives around to a cabin on the far side of the facility.

  “Quite an adventure to use a phone,” I whisper.

  The cabins look lovely, utterly tranquil, but really tacky. Alan lifts me from the Jeep to carry me, and we are kissing all the way down the short tree-lined path to our door. It is almost like a meadow here, with fresh spring grass and newly blooming wildflowers. Suddenly I imagine lying with Alan in the grass and gazing up at the trees, and seeing the deep, black sky full of stars at night. I wonder what it would be like to make love outdoors. The thought of running away with Alan and getting lost in some rural idyll is very tantalizing, yet it makes me feel sad and a touch homesick, and even a touch lost again.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  I look up to find Alan studying me, key in hand, almost into the lock.

  I shake my head. I smile. “Not a thing.”

  “Good. I have plans for you.” He opens the door and points at the bed. “But now you have to sit. Behave. I’ve got to make my calls first.”

  I nod, flush, feeling his touch without contact, as I drop in a heavy bounce on the bed. Alan reaches for the phone. He really is going to make the calls first. He sinks on the edge of the bed, takes a slip of paper from his pocket, and begins to dial away, as I try to focus on the room.

  The lamp makes me laugh. A Snow White figurine base. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Wicked Witch sheets beneath the heavy burgundy bedspread.

  The first call is to Rene. His tone is surprisingly cordial as he explains in that imperative guy way that she needs to pack and be ready when Colin arrives to collect her. He hangs up.

  I expected the call to be longer. I expected the Spanish Inquisition of questions out of Rene. But for some reason, the questions didn’t come, and for some indefinable reason Rene is just rolling with this when Rene never just rolls with anything.

  Second call is to Colin. I watch Alan’s hand move up and down his thigh as he barks rapid orders to Colin. My breathing spikes as I try to catch the words and ignore my spiking body. He touches himself and I want him to touch me. I stare at those long, tanned fingers. Now would be a really good time, Alan. Touch me. Please touch me now.

  Another call. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s so frustrating how quickly he can make me hot without trying. So frustrating that he can concentrate on his conversation when I can hardly concentrate on anything but him when he’s near.

  I glance at him and then I roll on my side until my face is near his back. I’m done behaving. I pull up his shirt. I make small kisses up his spine until I reach that tattoo across his shoulder blade. I use it as a road map for my traveling lips and tongue. I let my fingers dance from his side to his stomach and then lower, lower—ah, sharp inhale of breath. He stops my hand and looks over his shoulder. He gazes at me darkly. It makes me feel so hot when he looks at me like that.

  He continues talking as I ease up on my knees to kiss the pulse in his neck. I kiss his shoulder, then the other shoulder. I can hear the voice on the other end of the phone. It sounds male and professional. His lawyers perhaps. I should stop this. This is an important call.

  I lie back on the pillows, finding it nearly impossible to behave. What’s up with that? There is something carefree and wild in me today that is new. Perhaps it is the calm after the storm of last night and the silliness of where we are. I’m probably the first girl ever to have dragged Alan someplace like The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins.

  I make a face, Alan catches it, and I cover it quickly with a smile. I fiddle with my shoelaces and then pull them off. My toes begin to poke at his ear. His warm fingers wrap around my ankle and I make a pout, thinking he’s about to push my foot away, but he starts to kiss each toe, a gentle touch of lips, a tantalizing suck. Oh my. Desire, thick and pulsing, dances through my flesh. Jeez, he’s only kissing my feet. I close my eyes and surrender to the feeling, the touch of his lips on my arch, the feel of his tongue on my ankle.

  “Get your clothes off now,” he breathes and abruptly lifts me off the bed.

  Oh shit, the call ended. I’m not exactly sure where he’s going with this, but I undress anyway because Alan is naked and completely hard, and I am totally hot for whatever.

  “Don’t play with me, Chrissie, unless you are ready to play.” He hoists me up and turns me on the bed pulling me back until my knees are on the edge.

  He kisses my back and then that “wrong” spot, before
he hovers at the right spot and then moves to kiss the back of my thighs.

  He grabs my hips and fills me so quickly. He is touching me and the feeling of being completely filled makes my body burn and swallow him greedily. I groan and invert my back. The tilt allows him to penetrate more deeply. Slowly, he withdraws and then sinks into me. The tempo builds, harder and faster.

  I see the mirror above the desk. He is watching us in it. I watch him watching us and it makes my blood scorch through my veins. The rhythm is quick and intense, and I revel in it, watching him, watching us, watching him watch me watch. And it is all there, in his face, in the reflecting mirror—his passion, his love, his pain and his beauty—and it is us I see, very right even in everything so very messed up about us both.

  Quick, rough, and right. We come apart, together, and I explode around him in a chorus of squeaks and high-pitched whimpers.

  Alan collapses on the bed, taking me with him until my head is cradled against his chest and we are both struggling to breathe.

  He turns his head to look at me. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

  I smile. “How long do we have the room?”

  “Until tomorrow.”

  “I didn’t think they would rent rooms by the hour at a motel named after a Disney movie.”

  “Actually, they do.”

  I lift up my face to look at him. “Really?”

  He nods. I laugh.

  “They couldn’t break a hundred and that’s all Linda had,” Alan says, lightly tracing my arm with his fingertips.

  I start to laugh harder. “I forgot you don’t carry cash. Why didn’t you just charge it?”

  He sighs, raking a hand through his hair, and he smiles. It should be a completely comforting kind of smile; it is relaxed, happy and slightly understated. I find it not comforting at all. I tense.

  “The last thing you need, Chrissie, is for anyone to know we stayed here by the hour.”

  * * *

  I lie naked, sprawled over Alan’s chest, and we’ve been kissing and touching quietly for hours. I think the sex only ended because I feel drained, or else he would be working toward it again in this quiet after our passion. Alan’s sexual energy never wanes. All parts of Alan always rage simultaneously within him and never sleep.

  Alan trails his fingers up and down my back. “So, did bouncing a bed in a motel named after a Disney movie work for you?”

  I nod. I don’t want to talk. I just want to lie in this comfortable calm I feel in us both. I lay my cheek against his damp chest and can see through the window it’s late afternoon.

  “We should get dressed. We should go,” he says. He kisses me, and then turns until we are spooning and I am wrapped in the warmth of his body. “Rene is probably almost to The Farm. Do you want to call Jack before we leave?”

  Why did he mention Jack? I don’t want to let anything from the real world in yet.

  “No. I don’t want to talk to him until we are face to face. I don’t want to risk accidentally starting anything while I’m on the phone. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “Do you want me there when you talk to Jack?”

  Oh jeez, that’s a lot to process. The thought of having Alan with me when I’m with Jack is very weird and unsettling. It’s one thing to be with Alan and another to try to picture Jack in the mix.

  It was a sweet and kind offer, but just too strange to consider today. Still, I don’t want to hurt Alan’s feelings.

  “I think that would be a little hard to do. I go home Sunday and you are out on the road the week after. And this is my shit, Alan. Something I need to take care of on my own.”

  Alan eases back until he is staring directly into my eyes. “I can be there if you want me there, Chrissie.”

  “I know. I just don’t see how.”

  “Since you’re not going home, Chrissie, we can have Jack fly here before we leave on the road. Solution.”

  I tense. It is not the first time he’s said I’m not going home, but it’s not really something we’ve talked about and I can’t tell if he is serious, just being kind, or what exactly he’s suggesting.

  I pull out of his arms, pull on his shirt, and then sit on my knees staring down at him. “I’m going home, Alan. I have to finish school and go to college. I can’t just drop everything and run off with some guy.”

  “I’m not just ‘some guy.’ I’m the guy you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.”

  My heart does a somersault.

  Alan’s intense black eyes lock on me. “Why do you have to go back? What difference is finishing school going to make? It is the trap of ordinary people and you are not ordinary. What happened to just being, and being happy, or was that all just bullshit?”

  My cheeks grow hot and my body goes cold. “I can’t stay, Alan.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not how I’m made and you don’t really want me to stay, so why don’t we just leave it alone.”

  Shit! Peaceful Alan evaporates before my eyes, replaced by angry Alan. “Don’t ever tell me how I feel. Don’t ever tell me what I want. You don’t even know what you want.”

  Alan climbs from the bed and pulls on his jeans.

  “You are not going back to Santa Barbara, Chrissie.”

  He continues to dress, and when he’s got everything on except his shirt, he holds out his hand to me. “Give me my shirt. Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”

  Petulantly, I shrug out of it and toss it at him.

  I pull on my panties, bra, and top and realize that my hands are shaking. I feel so sick and disoriented. I don’t want to go back to Santa Barbara. I have to. The thought of going home turns me into a cold, nervous wreck. But I can’t stay, even if every part of me wants to. I can’t stay.

  I can feel him watching me. “Rene is probably at The Farm. We need to go.”

  I nod and climb from the bed. I make clumsy work of trying to pull on my jeans.

  “Fuck, Chrissie. Don’t cry.”

  I shake my head. “I hate it when you’re mean. You can be so mean.”

  “You’re not going back to Santa Barbara, Chrissie. There is no point in arguing about it. So why don’t we just go back to The Farm and be good to each other.”

  Truce. He is calling a truce and I let him help me with my clothes, but my limbs feel suddenly weak and too heavy. Alan thinks he’s gotten his way. Discussion over. He believes I am staying. But I can’t. And I don’t know how I’m ever going to leave him.

  * * *

  When we get back to The Farm, all the dysfunctional are gone except the Rowans.

  I am just climbing from the rust bucket Jeep when the front door swings open. Rene and Linda spring onto the porch together. Jeez, they are both in too short shorts and tank tops, with some kind of cocktail in hand.

  Rene darts down to the driveway and flings her arms around me. We are hugging. We are laughing. God, how I’ve missed her. We’ve been through so much together. There is a part of me that will never make sense without Rene.

  “I’m so glad to see you, Chrissie. The wedding was a nightmare. Thirty-seven was a nightmare. I don’t know how I got through it without going postal, and mother is, of course being mom, and I don’t know what to do about that. And jeez, what’s up with this farm? Why are we in the middle of nowhere? What the hell are we supposed to do here…?”

  * * *

  Since Bianca is gone, there is no chore list, and Alan and Len are in the kitchen making dinner.

  Rene and I are curled on the downstairs sofa drinking what I think are Mai Tais, but I can’t tell for certain. I don’t really like it. Too sweet. Maybe rum? I’ve never liked rum. Rene guzzles hers with enthusiasm.

  “So, what’s up, Chrissie?” Rene whispers. “You’ve hardly said a word. Is it all the tabloid shit? You know Eliza is going to die when she sees it. Was Jack really pissed?”

  Her questions and comments roll off me. I have so little time left with Alan. I won’t let anything—not the world, Re
ne, not Alan and not me—ruin it.

  I let my eyes widen at her in that back off way. “I’m happy. Leave it alone.”

  Rene frowns. I laugh. She is staring at me like she doesn’t know what to make of me.

  * * *

  Our last six days at The Farm whisper away in a comfortable quiet. There is much we do not talk about, the shit is beneath the carpet whether you talk about it or not. You can love whether you talk about it or not.

  I’ve learned so very much about life so quickly from Alan.

  After I pack up my things, I look at the old style bedroom, wanting to memorize every part of this space.

  I brush at my tears and make my way down the creaking stairs. Out on the porch, I find that everyone is packed up and the Rowans are just waiting to say goodbye to me before they go.

  Len drops a kiss on my head before Linda pulls me into her arms in an exuberant hug. “I love you. See ya soon.”

  “See ya soon, Linda.”

  It is so hard to hold back the tears, since she thinks I’m going on tour with them. I am really afraid I might never see her again. In a short span of time, she became an important piece of my history.

  I wave at Rene as she climbs into the Town Car with Colin. She is going back to Jack’s to wait for me. Alan helps me into Jack’s old, scarred leather jacket. We are going back to the city on the motorcycle. I don’t know why. It looks like it might rain, but Alan said it won’t, so I am going downstate the way I got here, sitting behind Alan and letting the world pass us by.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Something pulls me from sleep. Alan’s bedroom is dark and I am alone. Where is Alan? Then I hear the sound of raised voices in the apartment. I reach for Alan’s t-shirt and pull on a pair of panties.

  I freeze at the terrace doors. Oh god! Jack is here and they are arguing.

  “You have the nerve to pull my daughter into your fucked up life and you think it’s going to be OK?”

  Alan’s face is calm, emotionless, but I can see how angry and hurt he is.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Jack. I’m willing to explain if you’re willing to listen.”

  Jack’s expression is intense and harshly dismissive. “What can you possibly say that will change anything you’ve done? In three weeks you have made a complete nightmare of my daughter’s life. Will it undo dragging her through the rag sheets? Whatever you think you can say or do isn’t going to change any of the shit you’ve done.”