Family Drama 3-in-1 Box Set: String Bridge, The Book, Bitter Like Orange Peel

by Jessica Bell

  His wife does that.

  It makes him feel like a little boy.

  He doesn’t like it.

  Brian removes her hands and brings them to his mouth. They smell like lavender. He blows into the kitten-like softness with his warm breath. Ivy closes her eyes and smiles.

  I want to be your moisturizer.

  “Thanks for doing this for me, more than friend.” Ivy winks. She climbs the short flight of steps between the stone camel statues guarding the entrance, blows him a kiss, and disappears through the sky-high art-deco doors.

  I love you. I have to slow down.

  Ivy

  As Ivy wanders by the exhibit of Japanese woodblock prints, intricate snuff bottles, and jade sculptures, she realizes she should have spent a little time browsing the museum before attending the interview. Why did I waste my time smoking a cigarette? You moron! You don’t even know what this museum contains.

  In a panic, she speed-walks past every exhibit, trying to memorize the displays, just in case she is asked, “And why do you believe you would be an asset to this museum?” They always ask that question. Why didn’t you prepare yourself? See, that’s what happens when you get involved with men. You lose your freakin’ good sense.

  As she walks, she takes mental notes of everything her eyes can grasp in her manic speed. Dynasties: Majiayao, Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, Kangxi; Watercolours: Cherry Blossoms, Chickadees, Wild Peach Blossoms, by Nihonga artists: Hobun, Hosen, Shiho; New Artist: Zhang Xiaogang … goddesses, Yaksi figures, tribhanga curve, Guanyin, Dehua ware. Okay. My God, I’m so late.

  She approaches the door to the director’s office, a little out of breath, her confidence slipping through her toes and into the solid marble floor, never to be retrieved. She raises her hand to knock on his door with one knuckle, but hesitates. Taking off her coat, and straightening out her navy-blue tailored dress, she chants to herself: You can do this. You can do this. You were the highest achiever in your class. You have what it takes. You have what it takes. Don’t let your fear get in the way. Don’t be scared, Ivy.

  Interrupted by a tap on her shoulder, she swings around. The swoosh of her slippery-soled black pumps on the marble echoes through the corridor. Behind her is a man wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a white tie loosened under his collar with black Chinese writing on the end of it: . No fear. Oh my God. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.

  “Hello. You must be Ivy. I’m the director. Call me Ron. Have you been waiting here long? Sorry to keep you waiting. I was in dire need of a coffee.” Ron flicks his head toward the door. “Come in.” He opens his office door and gestures for Ivy to enter. Her jaw drops when she sees the walls covered in enlarged copies of the paintings from the watercolour exhibit.

  “Thank you. Wow.” Ivy looks around the room. “Hobun, Hosen, Shiho,” Ivy says softly, just in case her short-term memory has failed her.

  “Yes. Indeed. Great wallpaper, isn’t it? I had it made personally. Please, take a seat.” Ron sits on the corner of his desk, crosses his legs like a cabaret singer on a piano, and points Ivy to the seat in front of him.

  Oh yeah, I know you. You’re the type that needs to tower over people to feel in control. Huh. Typical. Just what I need.

  “Thanks,” Ivy chirps, her mind transiently sucked dry of social and/or professional conversational skills. Blonde moment. They’re becoming more frequent. She cringes at herself.

  “So, are you familiar with the Nihonga artists?” Ron asks, tilting his head.

  “Not in great detail. I like bone and pottery.” I like bone and pottery? Have you lost it? What about, “My expertise revolves around bone and pottery.” Socks up, Ivy.

  “Oh yes?” Ron smirks and pushes a pile of papers further from his butt.

  Don’t think your intimidation is going to work on me. I’ll pull myself together in a minute, and I’ll knock your socks off. Just give me half a sec while I reallocate my brain.

  Ron uncrosses his legs. “Well, we have plenty of pottery on display, but our museum is certainly lacking bone exhibits. Could you elaborate on what bone artifacts you are the most interested in?” He laughs like computer-generated American sitcom laughter, air-quoting art in artifacts, and swings his legs under his desk like a restless child.

  Ivy takes an internal breath of courage. “Two years ago I worked with a team of archaeologists in New Delhi, where I assisted in carbon-dating the oracle bone characters found in Qishan County in the Shaanxi province of China,” Ivy recites. Ha! Bet you’re speechless now, buddy. “We dis—.

  “Hmm, interesting,” Ron says, wide-eyed, wriggling his butt side to side. Ivy doesn’t quite know what to make of this guy. “Yes, sorry, please, continue.”

  Strangely enthused by Ron’s interest, Ivy brightens her tone. “Well, we discovered they actually dated back to the Western Zhou dynasty.”

  “From 1046 to 256 BC?” Ron leans forward as if being enlightened by a secret conspiracy theory.

  “Yes! Which of course shed significant new light on the number of such existing inscriptions. It was a remarkable discovery, and I’m certain I’d be able to get in touch with the leader of the team I worked with to negotiate something for the museum. I’m sure we’d be able to get hold of some tortoise-shell inscriptions too. Would you be interested in those?”

  “Oh definitely. Ivy, this sounds fascinating.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, let’s talk about your résumé. I recall it saying something about you having deferred from continuing your PhD, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Well …” Don’t mention the divorce. Don’t mention the depression. Don’t mention that your husband harassed your sister and you flipped out. And don’t mention that you miss your father but are too stubborn to admit it. And don’t mention that you resent your mother for never keeping your love for him alive. And don’t mention you had promised to eternally hate men until you fell in love with Brian. And don’t mention … no, I think you can mention that.

  “While I was assisting in New Delhi, I caught malaria and needed to be hospitalized. My professor suggested I take time off and come back when I was completely healthy again. When I recovered, I realized I really needed the time off, so thought I’d try something different and move overseas. I can always continue my PhD a little further down the line. And there’s nothing more educational than experiencing a new culture, I find.” Ivy flicks her fringe out of her face and offers a pursed-lipped smile.

  “Interesting. Well, how much longer are you intending to live in Seattle?”

  “I have no intention of leaving in the near future. In fact, I was thinking of picking up my PhD again here.”

  “Do you have a green card?” Ron bounces off the desk and sits in his regular position. In his chair.

  “Well, my father was born here, so I have automatic permission to stay.”

  “Ah, excellent. Then there should be no problem obtaining a long-term working visa then?”

  Ivy shakes her head, displaying her straight white teeth. She thinks about the day she visited Roger’s childhood home and watched a happy nuclear family exit the front door and drive off in their four-wheeler.

  Brian

  “I got the job. I got the job!” Ivy shrieks as she half runs, half skips toward Brian who is sitting on the park bench hoping for good news. He’s never seen her smile so hard. Well, maybe once, the first time he saw her at the café. He was distracted by her impish beauty and accidentally spilled his steaming hot coffee all over his groin after bumping into someone’s table.

  Brian stands and walks toward her, stretching his arms out to catch her and break her speed. She runs into him so hard that he has to lift her off the ground and spin her around to avoid falling flat on his back.

  As Ivy laughs, cute wrinkles frame her eyes. He wants to kiss them. He wants to kiss every wrinkle on her body. The ones on her neck when she looks down, the ones at the
corners of her mouth when she smiles, the ones on her belly when she’s sitting cross-legged on his bed. But what he wants to kiss the most is the little lonely dimple hiding away in her left cheek that likes to fleetingly emerge when he least expects it. It’s like trying to catch a firefly; as soon as you spot it, it disappears again.

  “That’s excellent. When do you start?”

  “In three weeks,” Ivy squeals, bringing her hands to her mouth to dampen the uncharacteristic shrill. Ivy takes Brian’s hands and leads him to a nearby park bench. “I think I need a cigarette to celebrate.” She reaches into her handbag for the packet, but Brian rests his hand on hers to stop her.

  “How about we forget the cigarette and just grab some lunch at an Irish pub? I’ve got a hankering for fish ’n’ chips.”

  “Can you smoke in there?”

  Brian laughs with a pitying frown. “I don’t think so.” I hope not.

  “Bugger.” Ivy drops her hands into her lap, bites her glossy lip, and looks over at a couple walking hand in hand into the museum.

  Brian stares at Ivy’s profile. Her absent gaze emits a mist of ethereal thought across her face. Brian wonders whether he should tell her how much he hates smoking and that he’s never dated a smoker before, or that he has decided it no longer bothers him. Does it? He also wonders if now would be the right time to tell her he loves her.

  “Ivy, I ...”

  Ivy turns to face him with a smile that seems now to have landed on earth.

  “I know this is incredibly soon, but ...”

  “Yes!” Ivy hugs Brian so tight he almost loses his breath. He clutches at her elbows and levers her into clear view.

  Uh-oh. “‘Yes’ what?”

  “Let’s move in together.” Ivy brings her knuckles to her chin, her shoulders to her ears, and grins.

  “Oh!” Brian’s arms go limp while trying to maintain ambiguous surprise.

  “Well, that was what you were going to say, wasn’t it?” Ivy manages an expression fit for a pantomime.

  “Yes.” Brian hesitates. “Yes, it was.” Can I take this back?

  “Great,” Ivy says, pulling her cigarettes out of her handbag and lights it with a certainty so intense Brian is afraid to rectify the situation. She takes Brian’s right arm and puts it around her shoulder, leaning into him and shutting her eyes with the grin of a plastic clown. Smoke wafts from her fingers directly into his face. He looks at her—an injured little sparrow in need of some warmth and food. A fragile, sensitive soul, who needs to be taken care of, yet is too proud to admit it. She is all he has ever wanted.

  Or is she not?

  Eydie

  A bottle of Smirnoff lies on the floor, open, pleading for her mother, Beth, to wake up and take down its remaining drops with her morning cigarette. Beth’s skeletal feeble limbs are splayed in all directions, similar to the dead, bruised victims Eydie’s seen on Crime TV.

  Their suburban house is small—slightly bigger than a caravan—but at least it doesn’t have wheels. At least this means they’re not quite “trailer trash.”

  Eydie passes Beth to go into the kitchenette, making as much noise as possible. Frankly, she couldn’t give a damn if she woke Beth up; she’d probably take that last sip of vodka and pass out again anyway.

  Beth is wheezing a little, so she’s still alive … so far. Eydie wonders if she’ll ever have to face the inevitable time when “passed out” evolves to “deceased.” If she wishes for that day to come a lot sooner than fate has planned, what will follow? Devastation, or devastating relief? And if the latter, will guilt wheedle its way into every passing thought? Into her meals, dress, makeup, false nails?

  Escaping is not easy. Escaping has just as many unattractive consequences as staying with this antediluvian witch. This mother. This bitch. Who has kept a lifetime of funds a secret from her in order to feed her own bottle-raising addiction. An addiction Eydie attempted to cure, by dropping out of high school and using her own meager hairdressing salary to pay for counseling. But the money didn’t only go toward that. It went toward the booze Beth would smuggle into her bag on the way, and devour quickly before returning home.

  A glob of drool vibrates in the corner of Beth’s mouth with every breath of air that struggles through her sticky cracked lips. Strands of stiff bleach-blonde hair, clumped together and matted below her ear, look petrified with dried saliva. Her fingers twitch. She has two black nails from when she jammed them in the hinge of the alcohol cabinet door. She groans. One eye opens. Eydie stares right at it—a vibrant crystal blue bordered with a yellowy bloodshot white.

  Ugh. You make me fuckin’ sick.

  Beth’s eye closes, and she sits up, blindly reaching toward the coffee table for her pack of 50s. It’s empty. She scrunches the packet and throws it across the room. It lands between an urn and an empty bottle of gin on the mantle.

  “Luv, get me a packet of cigs from the servo, will ya?” Beth croaks, her eyes still closed. She opens and closes her mouth in an attempt to rehydrate it, and clicks her tongue, as if tasting something foul—most likely the roof of her mouth. One of her cheeks is creased and streaked with red lines that look like giant broken corpuscles, temporarily marking her with pathetic addiction and a plea for concern—that is, until the marks fade and Beth’s blatant midday drunkenness reminds Eydie that sympathy claimed its freedom long ago, descending down their street in triumph.

  Beth pushes hair out of her face, trapping her fingers in the soggy matted clump near the base of her neck. She stands, almost losing balance, and shuffles into the kitchen. She pulls a sharp knife out of the drawer. Eydie doesn’t flinch, secretly hoping Beth will drive it through her stomach, but then instantly retracts the thought.

  Beth grabs the clump of hair in her fist and saws it off with the knife. The hair crunches along the blade, as if it were alive, crying for help. She stares out the window, leaves the mass of hair on the bench, and puts the knife back in the drawer.

  As if remembering Eydie is in the room, Beth yells, “Luv, I aksed ya a fuckin’ question. Are you and ya chubby arse gonna get me those cigs or do I ’ave to go out on the fuckin’ street and strain me poor old legs?” She stumbles back to the couch. Eydie focuses on Beth’s dirty cracked heels as her sweat humidifies the air around her.

  Eydie slaps two slices of white Tip Top bread on the cutting board and spreads them with salted margarine, promising herself that she’ll cut out all dairy products and carbohydrates tomorrow.

  “There’s a spare pack on ya dresser, Ma.” She shoves a whole slice into her mouth, chewing aggressively. Filling her mouth with an edible cushion is the only way to save herself from saying something she’ll regret and enduring Beth’s blistering slap.

  “Well, get it for me, will ya, luv?” Beth lies back down on the couch, closes her eyes, and nurses her head. She rubs her temples, swallows saliva, coughs it back up, swishes it around her mouth, and washes it down with the dregs of vodka from the bottle on the floor.

  The phone rings when Eydie is about to fetch Beth’s cigarettes.

  “Jesus, pick up the fuckin’ phone and tell ’em it’s too bloody early in the fuckin’ morning. Tell ’em I’m not ’ere.”

  Eydie mutters under her breath, “You’re never bloody ’ere,” and answers it. “Yeah?” she snaps, expecting a telemarketing rep to be on the other end.

  “Oh, er, hello, I was wondering if I can speak to Eydie.”

  “Sorry, but we’re not in-ter-res-ted in your products.” Eydie looks at Beth, who has already gotten up to raid the alcohol cabinet for a fresh bottle of booze. She’s just about to slam down the phone, when the voice on the other end cries out.

  “No, no, I’m not selling. My name’s Ailish Healy. I got your number from Roger Price’s sister—your father’s sister.”

  “Oh …” Eydie looks at Beth again. Beth pours herself a glass of scotch, trembling, spilling it all over the cabinet. Eydie turns her back to her and looks out the window at the deflated children’s float
ing-aid duck in the middle of the lawn, faded almost white from years in the sun. “Can ya hold on a min? I wanna switch to the cordless,” Eydie whispers and hangs up.

  “Who wassit?” Beth grunts.

  “Telemarketer.” Eydie glances at her feet. “I’m gonna get your cigs.” She goes into her bedroom, picks up the cordless phone, and sits on the edge of her bed as if for some reason her two feet need to be securely and firmly placed on the floor to prevent an accidental fall.

  She brings the cordless phone to her ear. “You know my father?” Her heart beats like a cog train gaining speed. This could be her way out. Out of this hellhole. Out of this pathetic attempt of living. Away from the fear of waking up to a dead body on the couch. A chance to be selfish, for once—once in this useless life.

  “Well …” Ailish gives a nervous and small cough. Eydie can hear her hand cover the receiver on the other end. “I’m sorry, this is difficult, awkward, sorry … I, er, well, my daughter is your half sister. Your father is her father too, and I was wondering if you’d like to meet us?”

  Eydie, dying to speak, to cry out in excitement, stares at the wall, muted by future possibilities sifting through her mind at rapid speed.

  Sisters. Friends. Family.

  Ailish clears her throat again. “I hate to ask you this out of the blue, but I was hoping you might know where I can get in touch with Roger too … Hello? Are you still there?”

  “So you’re my aunt?”

  “Well, no. Stepmother, perhaps.”

  “Oh!” Eydie drops the receiver into her lap, relief flushing through her body, tingling through her fingers, to the tip of her nose.

  I’m not alone. I’m not alone anymore.

  She hears Ailish’s distant voice—“Hello? Hello?”—between her knees, and in a panic takes hold of the receiver again and presses it firmly to her ear as if a gentle touch might let Ailish slip away.

  “I’m sorry,” Ailish says. “This must have come as a shock. And I’m being selfish asking you for your father’s details right off the bat. Would you, perhaps, like me to leave you with our phone number and maybe you can call back once the information has sunk in?”