It freed me from some age-old, unspoken dictum. I was underneath pushing against him, when suddenly the pressure inside me overflowed. I rolled on top of him and we looked into each other’s eyes, silent and knowing. Without a word, he turned onto his stomach, ass in the air. I mounted it, grabbed his shoulder in one hand and his hair in the other and pulled hard, grinding against his ass. Now we were both moaning loudly. I came with a throaty growl.
I collapsed onto the pillow, stunned. So much for being ravished. All this time I’d been wondering when a new lover would bring me an orgasm, and all I had to do was take it.
13
Glory Road
IN MY SMALL HOMETOWN in the Appalachian Mountains, there is an isosceles triangle anchored by three buildings. The first is on Glory Road, the house I grew up in, where my divorced mother lives. A half mile away, at the apex of the triangle, sits my maternal grandmother’s house. And back on Glory Road, just three blocks from my childhood home, is St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, where my brothers and I all received baptism, First Communion, and confirmation.
A peek inside the first house circa 1970 or 1975 would reveal me lying in a single bed behind thin paneled walls listening to my parents’ escalating whispers. It’s a weekend in fall. My father’s been watching NFL games one after another, chain-smoking and screaming at the television. My brothers are asleep in the adjoining room. The kitchen is mere feet from my door. I can hear my father mutter the word “douchebag” more loudly than the others. A little louder now, I hear “ugly fucking cunt.” My mother isn’t silent and I know from experience that she isn’t cowering. She answers back but I can’t make out her words, only his. He says, “I’ll cut your jugular vein so fast, you’ll be dead by the time the ambulance gets here.”
It’s strange, I think, lying in the dark. I’m not afraid or even all that upset. I must be a very strong girl. My heart beats normally. I think of other children who, in my place, would whimper or turn the light on. I don’t feel the need to do either. I won’t fall asleep, though, just in case my mother calls for me. I’ll know when it gets to that point. The words almost never spill over into physical violence—at most he’ll take it out on the furniture or the doors—but they always hover on the verge of it. “Robin!” she’ll scream defiantly, and I’ll run to the kitchen and stand between them, talking calmly to my father with both hands up, saying, “Daddy, please, it’s Robin. Please, Daddy, please just go to bed.” He’ll ignore me, reach around me to jab his fingers into my mother’s shoulder, still calling her cunt, fucking whore. The words “Daddy, please” will make my chest feel funny, only for a few seconds. Sometimes, if I stay between them long enough, he will eventually retreat to the bedroom. Only a few times will he slap or shove me to get to her.
As I get older, I’ll get louder and more brazen, welcoming the rare blow when it comes, inviting it with taunts like “What a big man you are! Pushing women and children around!” That one will get me knocked to the ground. My father’s body is large and merciless. It is a wall of cruelty I am destined to collide with. Knowing I can never win doesn’t stop me, because it’s the fight that counts. He himself has taught me that.
Once, when I am twelve and come between them during a particularly vicious fight, he kicks me across the floor until I am doubled into a fetal position. The next morning when I wake up, I shit blood. I yell for my mother, she in turn howls at him, and when he comes into the bathroom, I see him freeze, go white, as if God Himself had reached down and slapped him in the face.
A month later I have my first panic attack. As I shut my locker and walk down the hallway toward homeroom, the crowd of kids in front of me and in my peripheral vision suddenly tilts and then recedes. I drop out of their world and into a parallel universe. Their voices echo. I can’t breathe. In an attempt to steady my vision I focus on the orange brick wall and see its lines turn jagged. I reach out for it so as not to fall, and stand paralyzed in the spinning hallway, waiting to be swallowed up. Is it death, is that what’s happening? Somehow I make it to homeroom and lay my head down on my desk. And in the dark space behind my eyes, pressed against the backs of my hands folded on the desk, the terror begins to dissolve like particles, separating from solid black to a fuzzy grain. As it dissipates a warm light begins to take its place, growing brighter, filling me with peace. It is not just light. There is a presence at its center, a consciousness projecting unassailable power and kindness. This presence silently proclaims, You will be okay. I will take care of you. Every cell in my body responds with joy. Its assurance gets me through the next five years and stands to this day as the most profound spiritual experience of my life. When, in my senior year, my classmate dies and the panic attacks return, I will wait for the reassuring coda. It will never come again.
Most late-night fights don’t end in blows. They end with my father screaming, “Take your kids and get the fuck out! You’re all driving me nuts! I can’t take care of you anymore!” My mother and I gather up my brothers, all of us in pajamas, and drive to my grandparents’ house. We spend the weekend there, sprawled on their living room floor in sleeping bags, watching Hee Haw and Lawrence Welk with Grandpa, piling into his Chrysler Cordoba to go for ice cream. Grandma makes us eggs for breakfast and spaghetti and meatballs for supper. We go back home late Sunday night or possibly Monday after school. When we get home there might be broken dishes scattered across the floor, or overturned chairs. One time there will be an ax stuck in the thick wood of the front door.
Daddy won’t ever apologize. We’ll all just carry on, and it’s not even hard to carry on. There’s school, ballet, football games and football practice, all of it in a town where kids roam in packs and there’s no such thing as a stranger. There’s a built-in pool in our backyard and all the clothes and toys and cash we could want. There’s Dad when he’s not in a rage, telling me how smart and pretty I am, how proud he is of me. There’s Mom cooking and making my bed. There’s both of them always hugging and kissing all four of us and saying that they love us. I believe them. Even on the days when I hate one or both of them, I know it’s true.
During one of my mother’s visits to California, knowing how children can exaggerate, I ask her, “How often did Daddy kick us out of the house? Was it, like, twenty times? Or fifty?”
She looks at me. “Twenty or fifty? Are you kidding? It was hundreds.”
* * *
Whatever had protected me as I lay awake listening to my parents fight for eighteen years fell away within weeks of leaving my father’s house and moving into a Penn State dormitory two hours from home. Plucked from my environment, I had to rely on myself, and there was no self. The minute I awoke in the morning, burning heat traveled up my spine and bloomed into cold sweat. Vomit filled my throat, causing me to run from bed to toilet. A black ugliness descended over everything. In class, where earning a good grade remained my sole buffer from a complete breakdown, I’d watch the clock in disbelief at how slowly the minutes passed, with no idea how I’d get through the next hour. If I let myself think that I was only eighteen and had to last sixty or seventy more years on earth, I’d wince in pain. Several times a day I’d whip my head around, thinking I heard someone viciously hiss my name. I’d walk home from my night class balancing on a curb like a gymnast, telling myself that if I could make it to the dorm without falling off I’d be okay, but if I toppled even once that meant I was going insane.
I told no one. On weekends at home, my mother occasionally saw me wake up in a nauseous panic and tried her best to give me empty pep talks I couldn’t believe. What did she know about being on her own, leaving her family, assimilating into a college of thirty-six thousand new souls? Nothing. I was alone.
I white-knuckled it through six months before giving up and transferring to a satellite campus back in Scranton. Once home, though, in another bizarre twist, I suddenly couldn’t bring myself to walk into my parents’ house. On the front steps my body tightened as if bracing for impact. By the time I got to the porch,
I could barely move. Emotions I couldn’t begin to name ricocheted through me like pinballs trapped under glass. With no outlet and no context, I barely contained them through sheer force of will.
My grandparents took me in. I retreated to their small two-story house, always smelling of either bacon or onions. I hid out behind their heavy green curtains. They bought me a used car, took me out for clams on Saturday nights, and made sure I saved twenty-five dollars a week from my waitressing job. I slept in their tiny spare bedroom at the top of the creaky stairs with the wrought-iron railing, all of it scaled down to contain and hold me fast like an overgrown child in a fairy tale. That’s where I gathered strength and planned my getaway to California—too young to realize that there was no escaping myself.
It was this same bedroom in my grandmother’s house where Scott and I slept on our trips home. Though we’d go to my mom’s each day for meals and visits, I hadn’t spent the night there in twenty-three years.
My ninety-year-old grandmother protested when Scott sprang up to do the breakfast dishes the minute we had finished her French toast. He brushed her aside, laughing. He sat in my late grandfather’s old recliner reading while Grandma and I watched The Price Is Right and The Young and the Restless with the volume too loud. Framed photos of her children and grandchildren lined every wall and table, among them several of Scott and me: snuggling on the shore of Lake Tahoe in woolen sweaters, leaning into each other in Puerto Vallarta wearing bright summer clothes that showed off our tans. In the oldest one, taken in Venice around my twenty-eighth birthday, we sit arm in arm on a tiny walk-bridge over a canal. Whenever I called my grandmother from California, she unfailingly asked what I planned to cook Scott for dinner that night. It was the time we’d spent in her house over the years that had made family life look worthwhile and possible.
* * *
St. Mary’s simple cross and sole rosetta window stood solemn watch over the surrounding buildings on Glory Road, the date of its construction chiseled in Roman numerals into its cornerstone. Inside, light filtered and multiplied through two levels of soaring stained glass windows, against a concave altar painted sky blue, from rows of votives flickering beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. The last time I had stood in front of her, I wore my wedding dress, crying as Scott and I exchanged rings with shaky hands. I’d wanted to get married on a beach but for my grandmother’s sake chose the traditional forum. And so I walked down the aisle of St. Mary’s that spring evening light-headed and trembling, my lifelong fears compressed to a single point that existed both in real time—a rapidly approaching moment—and in my body, deep inside my chest cavity. To my astonishment, the ritual took this dread and alchemized it, spinning its dark surface into something sublime. I limped shallow-breathed toward the threshold and twenty minutes later emerged beaming, grasping Scott’s hand, every cell relaxed.
After our raucous wedding reception, Scott and I had gone straight to sleep, exhausted. The next afternoon, at a beach resort in Jamaica, we napped on a king-sized bed under a gently whirring ceiling fan while a rainstorm outside the screen door rustled palm trees, unleashing the smell of frangipani and grass. In the darkened room, Scott climbed on top of me as usual, but something was different. In the same spot where the day before my heart had strained, a cog turned one smidgen, just enough to unlock it. Scott’s touch released an unfamiliar yielding in me. My skin went porous; his woodsy scent swirled straight through it. An orgasm began to build, not in the usual place but up high behind my belly button. It shot through my chest, my throat and limbs, realigning me as it went, touching for the first time some chord buried in my center. It was enough to allay all my previous misgivings about marriage.
* * *
Scott and I were in Pennsylvania for the baptism of my brother Rocco’s first child. He was three weeks old. I was to be his godmother. My mom had mailed a handful of photos: one of Rocco encircling his wife and the baby in his arms; another of Rocco holding the swaddled infant, my father and two other brothers smiling alongside him; a third of the baby newly washed after emerging from the womb, crimson as an autumn leaf. He’s sitting on white towels with knees bowed and tiny fists raised as if in self-defense. A nurse’s gloved hand supports his head, which is largely hidden as it is thrown back, the mouth wide and dark, the tongue vibrating in an existential howl.
I didn’t intend to ever tell my grandmother about the project, and the baptism wasn’t the time to bring it up with my brothers. But I was too close to my mother to keep it from her. I did it while we were in her kitchen, she unpacking groceries and me loading the dishwasher, gazing out the window above the sink onto the backyard and the old built-in pool, collapsed now and filled with weeds the size of trees.
“So, Scott and I are spending weekdays apart,” I began. “I got an apartment.”
“Why? Did he do something?” She paused at the refrigerator and turned to me.
“No. Nothing dramatic like that. Just, after the vasectomy … I don’t know, Ma. I’m not getting any younger. I need to get some things out of my system, and what’s to stop me if I’m not going to have kids? A lot of people in San Francisco have open relationships.”
“Good,” she responded conclusively. She turned back to stocking the fridge. “Good for you. You need to do whatever makes you happy. Scott does what makes him happy.”
It was difficult to discern her motivation. After divorcing my dad in her mid-forties, she had spent twelve years living with a hardworking man who eventually drove her crazy with his inability to communicate. Having experienced both extremes of passion, she now lauded the joys of living alone. She shut the refrigerator door, littered with family photos and magnetic twelve-step slogans: “One day at a time,” “God grant me the serenity,” “Keep it simple.” Centered among the inspirational quotes, a shiny purple magnet read: “There are only two things wrong with men: everything they SAY and everything they DO.”
“I had a wild phase in my forties,” she said as she moved about the kitchen folding up grocery bags. “Every woman needs that at some point.”
That night, I met my two oldest friends, Stacey and Maria, at a local bar. We’d known one another since kindergarten.
“So, I need to tell you guys about my midlife crisis. After the vasectomy, I kind of lost it. I told Scott I need to sow my wild oats before it’s too late. We’re living apart on the weekdays and we’re free to see other people. And then I come home on weekends.”
They looked unimpressed. Stacey, the more liberal of the two, glanced down at her drink and back up at me. “I’m not surprised, Rob. I love Scott, but he always has to have it his way. He didn’t want to live here in town so you went to Philadelphia. He didn’t want to stay in Philadelphia so you went back to California. He didn’t want kids so you didn’t have them.”
“I know,” I said. “This time, it’s going to be my way.”
“But I wouldn’t do this if I were you,” she continued. “It can’t end well.”
“I know it’s risky. But I have to do it.”
“You’re crazy,” Maria interjected, shaking her head. She was still with the man she’d married at nineteen. Though our paths had diverged long ago, I counted on her to give me the no-bullshit reading.
“What else am I supposed to do, then? Neither of us wants to get divorced. But I can’t go to my grave a quiet, childless wife with no adventures. I was ready to give up more lovers for a family, but I can’t give up both.”
“But how is sleeping with a lot of guys going to make you feel better about not having kids?”
“It’s not going to make me feel better about kids. Sleeping with a lot of guys is going to make me feel better on my deathbed. I’m going to feel like I lived, like I didn’t spend my life in a box. If I had kids and grandkids around my deathbed, I wouldn’t need that. Kids are proof that you’ve lived.”
“But then why did you get married?”
“Because I loved him, and I hoped we’d have kids!” I said a bit too loudly. “I
mean, seriously, Maria, tell me you’d feel fulfilled with Jim if you didn’t have your sons. Look me in the eye and tell me that.”
She thought about it. “I can’t even picture it.”
“You and Jim, alone in the house every day till death do you part. Him refusing to have a child after you begged him. You’d be happy?”
“Bernie and I aren’t going to have kids and I’m happy just being with him,” Stacey said.
“Yeah but you already have a grown kid, Stace. And if you wanted another one, Bernie would do it in a heartbeat. He’d never refuse you.”
“So this is your revenge on Scott, because he refused you.”
“It’s not revenge, it’s rebellion,” I said, relieved to the bone to have the kinds of friends who weren’t afraid of straight talk, for even though I was arguing my case, the truth was that I didn’t know exactly what I was doing or why. Their questions were helping me figure it out. “I’m not trying to hurt Scott, I swear. But I can’t compromise anymore. I just can’t. I’m going to get what I need.”
“What do you need that Scott can’t give you?” Maria asked.
I struggled to find the words. “Life,” I said. “It’s so quiet when it’s just me and him. I need life.”
They looked at each other. Stacey gave a slight shrug, Maria a slight shake of the head.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” I asked.
The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost Page 9