by Julia Kent
Dad has that insecure look on his face again.
Damn.
“Declan,” he chokes out. “Declan’s the new guy? The one your mother thinks will get her that wedding at Farmington?”
“You just don’t want to lose the bet,” Mom says. She pulls out a hand towel, shakes it out, smoothes every wrinkle, and starts unloading makeup from her kit. It’s like watching a surgeon get ready for a heart transplant. Her precision and focus is startling.
“What bet?” The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’ve just given her an opening the size of Rob Ford’s nostrils to talk about whatever calamity this bet involves.
“We have a bet,” Dad says with a sigh. At least he’s gone back to looking like my dad and not like a horny teenager.
“About me?”
“About Farmington Country Club. I bet your mother than none of you three kids will ever get married there.”
“What’s the wager?” I am really, really afraid to ask.
Mom is holding what looks like a giant pizza-oven paddle in her hand. She reaches into the bag and pulls out a jar of pancake makeup. Oh, crap.
“Your father gets to try something I’ve never let him do in more than thirty years of our being together.”
Amy happens to walk in just as Mom is explaining and asks, “Anal?”
Chapter Eight
Dad’s eyes bug out. Mine stretch so far across the room I think they’re going to fall out a window. Only Mom stays calm and waves the hand with the makeup paddle in it. “Oh, no, honey. We already—”
“MARIE!” Dad bellows. He glares at Amy like she’s a complete stranger who just accosted him. “And Amelia Langstrom Jacoby, what do you think you’re doing talking about…well…that around us?”
“She’s the one who lent me those Fifty Shades books, Jason,” Mom says in a sotto voce. As if we can’t hear her. My apartment is so small, Chuckles can hear her from the roof.
“Oh.” There are moments in our family where poor dad has to deal with being the only testicle owner in a field of ovaries. Having the toilet seat down nonstop for thirty-plus years is one of those issues. Learning where to park at the mall to get that perfect balance between being close to an entrance but out of our teen girlfriends’ sight is another. Dealing with four periods at different times took a kind of engineer’s calibration to get just right. And a lot of mad rushes to the grocery store to get the perfect ice cream to make our Medusa heads behave.
And this is another one—hearing his now-adult daughter, his baby, talk about anal sex. And having his wife join right in.
I—I have a ton of sympathy for him, because I. Do. Not. Want. To. Hear. About. This. At all. Ever. I could go my entire life without thinking about anal sex itself (or mostly not thinking about it…), but the thought of my parents reading my sister’s borrowed copy of Fifty Shades of Grey and then using that as some kind of blueprint to try out—
This is how desire dies. My formerly warm-for-his-form nether regions can’t think about Declan now without imagining Mom and Dad in a Red Room of Pain. No wonder Mom’s asking about helicopters and billionaires.
“Why are you talking about anal sex when Shannon’s date will be here in twenty-three minutes?” Amy asks.
Dad turns a shade of red that perfectly matches his beard. Whoa. Didn’t know that vasodilation could produce that color.
“I wasn’t talking about it! You started it!” he sputters.
Mom approaches me with a mascara wand that looks like she used it as a dipstick in a sixty-year-old tractor on a farm. “We need to do those eyes!” She sniffs the air around my neck. “Did you shower this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmph. You wouldn’t know it.” She glances at the clock. “No time for a shower. Maybe you should just douche.”
All of the color drains out of Dad’s face. Now he looks like he has Ronald McDonald’s hair plastered on his chin, like he just experienced the McDonald’s version of the Donner Party.
“Nobody douches nowadays, Mom!” Amy protests. “What guy wants a mouthful of petrochemicals and perfume?”
Dad turns the color of cheap photocopy paper.
“You need a chair, Dad?” I’m worried he’s about to faint, and I cannot have anyone fainting in my apartment a mere nineteen minutes before I need to sprint out the door and engage in professionally inappropriate groping with my client.
“Actually, yes,” Dad mutters.
He sits down right on top of Chuckles’ mouse victim.
“You ever have that ‘not so fresh feeling’?” Amy asks Dad.
“Oh, God,” he groans. His brows connect again and he places his hands on the arms of the chair. My eye catches the glint of sunlight off his gold watch and a second of unreality pours through me. Watch. What’s it like to wear a watch?
He pushes up and hovers, frozen in place, his butt in the air.
I don’t like to think about my father’s butt.
“JASON!” Mom screams. “I can’t believe you sat on a dead mouse!”
Tap tap tap.
All four of us spin toward the sound. I look at the clock—5:53—before turning toward the inevitable.
Declan McCormick is the kind of guy who shows up just a little early.
A little too early.
Dad stands up all the way. Mom bum-rushes me and bodily forces me into my bedroom. Amy runs her fingers through her hair and I see her checking herself in the steely reflection of the stove’s backsplash. A flash of jealousy roars up in me, like it did with Jessica back at the restaurant.
“You need to clean yourself up now! Jason will keep him occupied and Amy can keep him happy.”
Now I’m seeing green. “Amy will most certainly NOT keep Declan happy!” I say in a sound that can only be described as slightly panther-like, including the baring of fangs I did not know I possess.
Mom is ripping a vent brush through my hair and shoving a pair of clear, red-thing underwear my way. “Here.”
“What’s this? A scrunchie?”
“No. Your sister’s underpants.”
“You want me to wear Amy’s thong?”
“Shannon,” she says, exasperated as she pulls my hair into a braid, “fashion designers do make underwear smaller than a semaphore flag, you know? Men love butt floss.”
She snaps my braid against my back and the screech screech of metal hangers against the closet bar tell me she’s in my wardrobe, trying to find something perfect. I can’t see her because I’m pulling off my shirt, but then I stop when I realize my bedroom door is still open.
I peek out. Dad is crossing the room and now he’s shaking Declan’s hand. The back of Dad’s jeans are disgusting. The half-dead mouse is stuck to the mess.
And then—plop.
It falls to the ground and bounces between his legs, right into the space between him and Declan.
Mom mercifully closes the door as I whimper.
“It will be fine,” she soothes, pulling my shirt over my head. Her threaded brows nearly cross. “My God, Shannon, when did you last buy a new bra? Before iPhones were invented?”
“Nothing wrong with it. It’s comfortable.”
She laughs. “Comfort has nothing to do with dating!” I look on my bed. She’s laid out a hot-pink spaghetti-strap top, a short tan skirt, and a pashmina. Plus heels that have to be Amy’s, because if I walk on those I’ll look like one of the misfit toys from Toy Story.
“We’re going on a picnic. In the woods. On a hiking trail,” I say slowly.
“I know. I aimed for a practical look.”
“You missed. It’s like you aimed for New York City and hit Hawaii instead.”
“I have impeccable fashion taste!”
“For decorating Russian email order brides.” Red g-string, hot-pink top, tan miniskirt that shows whether I used a hedge trimmer or not, and come-hump-me-and-give-my-mom-billionaire-grandbabies pumps.
“Shannon!” Desperation shines in her eyes. Or maybe that’s
just the new colored contacts she got to add some mystery. They’re a shade of violet that could only be made in a New Jersey chemical plant.
“I am wearing hiking boots, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and very little makeup.”
Mom reaches for her heart like she’s having palpitations. “You can’t!” She looks like that old dude from the ’70s sitcom Mom and Dad watch on cable. The guy who works at a junkyard and shouts, “I’m coming, Elizabeth!” and fakes a heart attack whenever he doesn’t like something his son says.
I think those TV writers knew my mom.
“I will!” I really won’t, but right now I have a really amazing guy I’d like to have ask me out again, but my dad is offering up half-digested rodents from his ass. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to get second-hand email forwards from Declan’s assistant.
“Why would you do that?” she cries, trying to block me from my own dresser and closet.
In full panic mode as the swirl of everything threatens to take over, I reach into my top drawer and pull out a pair of faded light blue underpants. They’re so old the cloth has worn away in parts, leaving bare elastic.
“Step away from my closet or I’ll wear these!”
“Noooooo!” she screams. It’s loud. So loud my dad bursts through the door two seconds later.
I’m standing in my ancient bra and work pants, holding a pair of underwear that really shouldn’t be allowed to be used as rags for washing the car. My hair is in a gorgeous braid, but Mom is holding a giant can of Aqua Net now and the nozzle is pointed right at me.
“Whatever’s going on, don’t blind the poor girl, Marie!” Dad shouts.
Declan is standing just close enough to Amy to make me want to claw her eyes out, and the two lean toward each other as they peer into my bedroom. Eyebrows shoot up to hairlines—one auburn, one dark—and a familiar expression crosses Declan’s face.
Yet again, I’ve embarrassed the crap out of myself and he’s amused.
This is getting old. Fast.
“Get in here, Jason!” Mom mumbles, grabbing his arm. “You have dead mouse cooties all over you.”
“I can’t change, Marie,” he says, holding his hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t have a spare set of clothes anywhere.”
“Shannon must have a pair of sweatpants that fit you.”
Dad is six feet two and about 240 pounds. I’m a good six inches shorter and don’t weigh that much. His belly is right where my waist is. There is no way I own a pair of pants that will fit him, and I tell Mom this. In the language of Dog Whistle.
“Get your special sweats for your dad. You have a pair,” she says in a tough-as-nails voice.
“Special what?”
“For that time of the month.”
“We’re supposed to wear special pants when we’re bleeding? I thought that was a Jewish ritual or something.”
Mom sighs heavily. “For when you’re bloated.”
“For when I’m—oooohhhh,” I mutter. Now I get it. I hate when she’s right. I march over to my dresser and reach into the top. My XXL flannel jammy bottoms are like stretching a hot-air balloon over a blimp.
And four to five days a month, I live in them. A few pints of ice cream and a lot of salt ’n’ vinegar potato chips do, too.
Dates start out in many ways. Most begin with the first meet-up. Your place, his, the bar, the restaurant. Whatever. The specifics aren’t important—the simple joining of two bodies into one shared space is, though.
I’ll bet that in the expanse of time, space, and millions—billions!—of dates throughout history, none of them started with cat puke on a father’s ass and ended with him wearing his daughter’s period sweats.
“You want me to wear what?” Dad roars. Roars! My father is many things—warm, kind, unfailingly patient (because you have to be in order to stay married to my mother)—but “dominant male” is the lowest thing on his list of attributes. His shoulders seem to expand and muscles in his neck pop out, like he’s becoming the Hulk.
“Anything is better than dead mouse,” Mom says with a sigh. She doesn’t seem to see the massive transformation in Dad.
“Wearing my daughter’s…” He can’t say “period.”
Tap tap tap.
Chapter Nine
I’m still wearing just a bra and work pants. A flush of panic chills my skin as I remember that Declan is just a handful of feet away, waiting for me, and probably hearing every word of my parents’ argument over my menstrual wardrobe.
“Shannon?” Amy says through the door. Her voice is hushed, but I can make out her words. “You might want to get moving. Declan’s here.”
“I know he’s here,” I say back. “I saw you talking to him.” My voice sounds like that pea-soup-spewing chick from The Exorcist.
“I am also cleaning up the cat mess,” she says through what sounds like clenched teeth.
I’m struck dumb. Dumb. I can’t believe Declan just witnessed that. Welcome to my apartment!
Welcome to my crazy life.
“Thank you,” I whisper back with genuine emotion. “I appreciate that.”
“You owe me.”
“I owe everyone.”
“Including me,” Mom adds, “because we are going to make you beautiful.” She has four—four!—tubes of mascara lined up and I swear she’s mixing joint compound into the under-eye concealer.
“Shannon doesn’t need any of that,” Dad says to Mom, reaching for her hand. “She’s beautiful right now. Look at her.” And then he realizes I’m not wearing a shirt, tearing his eyes away and turning his back to me.
“Dad, please,” I say. “Wear my jammy pants.” He takes them from my bed and walks slowly to the door, completely silent. The gentle click of the door closing after he leaves feels like a rebuke.
I throw on the shirt I’d planned to wear all along, kick off my shoes, peel off my stockings, and shimmy out of my pants. Mom turns away, but flings the red thong at me. It lands on my head like a deranged spider.
Ignoring it, I grab a pair of simple bikini underwear and my well-worn jeans, and I finish getting dressed. Then I take care of basic hygiene with deodorant, and tuck my shirt in. If it’s chilly tonight, a sweater would work. Mom watches with the preying eyes of a hawk.
A hawk with an eyelash curler clutched in her talons.
My lightweight v-neck made from a blend of silk and cashmere is perfect, so I tie it around my waist. I can’t run to the bathroom without having Declan see me, so I do what I can with my own makeup at my vanity on top of my dresser, ignoring Mom, whose silence has turned lethal.
Aside from needing to brush my teeth before putting on lipstick, the Shannon looking back at me from the mirror looks pretty good. Brown hair pulled back in a lovely braid, I have that fresh-faced, naturally athletic look, with my skin clear and a light layer of makeup applied to make it look outdoorsy. Brown eyes framed by a little mascara and a hint of eyeliner look more excited than scared. My nose is exactly where it’s always been, and my cheeks are flushed with a mix of applied color and organic arousal.
“You look like a fifteen-year-old going on her first date, Shannon. Like one of those athletic types.”
“We’re going hiking, so that’s perfect!”
“You’re not going hiking. You’re going on a charm mission.”
“A what?” What the hell is a charm mission? I have visions of debutantes wearing handguns on their thighs and rappelling down glass skyscrapers in Jimmy Choo heels.
Mom smoothes the wrinkles at my shoulders and tucks a loose wave of hair behind my ear, tweaking my look with little ministrations that used to annoy me when I was younger. These days, they make me feel loved.
“Charm mission. You’re auditioning, Shannon.” She lets a huge rush of air come out in one big whoosh. “Don’t you see that?” Her voice changes from exasperated to concerned, as if it dawns on her, mid-breath, that I really don’t view this situation through the same lens that she does.
“It�
�s a date. Not an audition. There’s no role I’m trying out for.”
Her laugh is a little too cynical for my poor anxious self, because the sound of it pouring out of her makes all the hair on my arms stand up.
“Oh, honey, yes you are. You’re too naïve to see it.” She shakes her head and takes a deep breath, her words coming out as she exhales. “Men like Declan McCormick require a certain kind of woman.”
“Steve required a certain kind of woman. See how well that went?” I just hope it’s not the same certain kind of woman. A mental image of Jessica Coffin chooses that exact moment to invade my brain. I shove it away and replace it with one involving Declan’s hands, my ass, and a kiss that crowds everything else out.
Her eyes go troubled on my behalf. Or maybe she’s actually reflecting on my words. Then she says: “Steve and Declan are nothing alike.”
“Because Declan comes from money?” Steve wasn’t born into it. He scraped and clawed his way up. Declan’s family—according to Amanda’s research—has been rich longer than the United States has existed. Something about shipping and mining. Her words trickle trough my subconscious as Mom continues.
“No—not because Declan has more money. Because Steve is a scrabbler. Always has been, and always will be. His sense of self depends entirely on whether his ambition is being filled. If he feels like he’s making progress, then his identity feels secure. If he’s standing still or falling back, then he loses who he is.”
She’s gone wistful, and Mom doesn’t do wistful. I am acutely aware of the ticking of time, and of Declan’s presence behind that door, and yet I’m riveted. I’ve never heard my mother wax rhapsodic about anything other than new spring colors in the latest Lululemon fashion campaign.
“Honey,” she says, her hands on my shoulders. Our faces are a foot from each other and her eyes shimmer under something that isn’t quite tears. “Declan knows who he is. There’s a quiet confidence that men from his kind of family possess. It’s easy to be with someone like that when you know who you are.”
She frowns. “But if you don’t—if the deep core of Shannon isn’t anchored—then being with him can feel like you’re lost. The world around you will insist that you’re standing on solid ground, and then one day you’ll realize you’re just balanced really well atop an enormous piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean.”