by Julia Kent
“Nice.”
“He sent one to Sam’s parents, too.”
We stood in silence, eyes locked. Dad and Mom were there with me when we found Sam after his dad beat the shit out of him.
“Why?” Garrett knew about Sam’s past.
“Said his mom was struggling. His Dad’s in a long-term rehab facility.” Dad’s voice dropped. “He’s never getting out. The alcohol destroyed him. Swiss cheese brain, from what I heard. Garrett thought she’d appreciate it.” Dad sighed. “I know Sam has every right to cut off his parents, and I know why, but I can’t imagine.” He reached down and squeezed my shoulder, voice choking. “I can’t imagine.”
“Can’t imagine what?” chirped Mom from behind us.
“Having your own kid cut off contact.”
“Joey!” she screeched. “Are you thinking about doing that? Why? Because I talked about my vagina with you?”
Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “Why in the hell would you do that, dear? No boy needs to hear his mom talking about her private parts.”
I was suddenly thirsty and slipped out from between them, racing down the stairs to the kitchen.
A wall of shining steel greeted me. Huh. Last time I was here, the appliances were all white. Mom must have remodeled. Every room in the house had been remodeled since I was in middle school. Maybe she had a secret schedule hidden somewhere, a rotation of renovation that required her to completely overhaul the entire house every decade. We had contractors who practically lived here. At once point, I started calling the plumber “Dad” because they looked so much alike.
And the plumber was here more.
I opened the refrigerator door. It made a pneumatic click, then a wheeze, like opening the airlock hatch on a space ship. The door had a seltzer water dispenser and I half expected a hand job option there, too. That would be a cool feature, but I had to settle for grabbing a half gallon of raw milk and a bowl of organic, wild blueberries to stave off hunger.
“Those are for my smoothie, Joey!” Mom shrieked behind me as I shoved a handful in and downed it with milk. “And use a glass, for god’s sake. Who knows where your mouth has been, and I don’t want to have to tell the doctor I got herpes from my own child.”
I choked, spraying tiny blue balls and milk in an impressive fan of horror.
She shook her head and sighed, now calm. “And Cecilia just came this morning. You always pick the day before her day off to make a mess. It’s like you’re torturing me on purpose.”
Milk dribbled down the front of my chin and shirt like I was the lead in one of my roommates’ favorite porn videos. She wasn’t even looking at me any more, her attention averted, fingers tapping the screen of her smartphone.
If I were at any friend’s house, in my own apartment, or at Trevor and Darla’s place, I’d clean up the mess I’d just made. That’s how life worked. You made a mess and you took care of it, out of courtesy to other people and because that’s just part of being a decent human being. Clean up your own shit. Don’t put that burden on someone else. I could go into the legal framework for how that specific moral code translates into the legal structure in the United States, but I won’t. Not now.
Not when Mom just transferred her own shit on to me.
I stormed upstairs. She ignored me. Covered in milk and coated in a kind of visceral shame that made me already regret coming home at Mom’s insistence—notice how we hadn’t even gotten to that part yet?—I needed a shower. Bad.
I marched into my bedroom, yanked a t-shirt and jeans out of my drawers, and opened the door to my bathroom.
To be greeted with a wall of sheer plastic and a plumber’s ass crack so big it could be the Grand Canyon.
“Uhhh, what?” I barked out.
The guy on the ground stood and turned around. “Hey, Joey!”
That’s right. Dad. Not my real dad, but Paul the Plumber was damn close. I broke out into a grin in spite of myself, my eyes jumping all over the gutted room.
“Again?” I asked ruefully.
“Again,” he said with a sigh. “Your parents are paying for my son David’s braces.” Paul was a beast of a man. Reminded me a little bit of Darla’s Uncle Mike. A rough talker, and not well educated. But Paul was a smart guy, and he loved to talk sports.
I snorted. “Glad their money’s put to good use.”
He frowned. “I’d say putting you thorough law school counts, too.”
Oh. Great. Now Paul was guilting me?
A corner of his mouth shot up. “Gotta have someone on my side when I’m sitting in the drunk tank. The second you pass the bar, I want your card.”
My shoulders relaxed. Okay. Not guilting me. Being back home made me tense and on guard in ways I didn’t even realize.
“JOEY!” Mom’s screech could cut glass. “Use the shower in my bedroom. And don’t forget to use the blue bathmat this time, and not the cream one, if you’re going to use a blue towel.”
Paul’s eyebrows arched up in question.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Mom’s rules.”
“She makes you match the towel to the bathmat?”
My body halted, not sure how to explain. Ingrained into me for years, Mom’s rules made sense. It wasn’t until middle school that I realized other families didn’t make their maids iron the curtains every week using distilled water and lavender in the iron’s steam, or make sure that the coconut oil they stir fried their edamame in was slave free.
“Yeah.” It was easier to take the simplest explanation.
“That explains a lot.”
“You’ve known her for years, Paul. Remember when she got all upset with you because the trim in the bathroom had three percent of its materials from China and she was terrified we were all going to get antimony poisoning?”
“I remember. All while she was sucking down sulfite-free, organic wine like it was a sports drink.”
“Mom doesn’t get irony, Paul.”
“Your mom’s checks cash like anybody else’s, bud.”
And that’s why I liked Paul.
“How about that Superbowl?” I asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
“JOEY!” she screamed again. “I NEED YOU.”
“She needs you,” Paul said, giving me a look of sympathy.
“She needs a muzzle,” I muttered as Paul snickered, my hand in a salute as I walked downstairs, complying with Mom’s request.
She was standing in front of the refrigerator, fingers tapping. Dad was on the ground, cleaning up my mess. A wave of resentment poured over me.
“You don’t have to do that, Dad,” I said, bending down.
“Yes, I do,” he snapped. “If you don’t do it immediately and do it right, it just makes a bigger mess later.”
The words churned inside me, making me uneasy and a bit sick. My body tensed, abs tight and centered, like I was about to lunge, but the nerve impulses kept me in place, teeming on the surface of my skin. Why did that comment resonate like that?
“Joey, I called you home for a reason,” Mom said, grabbing me for a big hug, which is hard to do when you’re four-foot-ten but she did it. Her hugs felt like being embraced by a twisted wire coat hanger scented with lavender.
“Yeah? You want to tell me more about your hymen?”
Dad’s head snapped up from the floor. “Her what?”
Mom’s fingers dug in as she dragged me into the great room off the kitchen. “That is a surprise!” she hissed through gritted teeth. “For our anniversary.”
“How the hell am I supposed to know which secrets to keep and which ones to spill.”
“Why would you ever divulge one of my secrets?”
“When Dad bribes me to.”
“HERB!”
Gene walked into the kitchen with a smirk on his face, covered in sweat, wearing bike shorts and flip flops. In April. In Massachusetts.
“Any almond milk left? You didn’t drink it all, did you, Joe?”
Mom and Dad bickered next to us, their voices
tight and clipped, like listening to two lawyers go at it over technicalities. Which they were.
“Nope. I tried to drink the raw milk.”
“Tried? Did it go bad?” Our conversation went on as if my six-four bear of a father weren’t getting his ass reamed by my pocket-sized mom.
“No. I was drinking it when mom walked in and acted like I was a sex slave trafficker for chugging straight out of the carton.”
“Well,” he said pleasantly, pulling out a blender and a handful of ingredients for a smoothie, “that’s one step above whale killer.”
“Who’s killing whales?” Mom asked, completely ignoring Dad, who was in mid-sentence and red faced.
“Joe,” Gene said without stopping his task, pouring almond milk into the blender, adding raw cocoa powder and chia seeds. I had a sudden pang for fried green tomatoes and coconut shrimp at Jeddy’s diner.
“You’re killing whales?”
“Yep. Killed three today, all before dawn. Great way to start the day. Like getting a hymen restoration.”
Gene’s hand halted on the bag of fresh spinach.
“A what?” Dad asked.
“Never mind,” I called out as I walked back to my room, where Paul was on the phone with a supplier asking for joint compound that didn’t have gluten in it for his crazyass client.
Mom followed me. Paul closed the door gently. I heard a few choice words like, “I know!” and “She pays me by the hour. Negotiated that a long time ago, Manny!” and “How the fuck should I know? Maybe she eats joint compound in her sleep?”
“Look what you’ve done! Ruined my anniversary surprise.”
“Just tell him I’m the one getting the hymen surgery.”
Her glare could double as a surgeon’s scalpel.
“You keep walking away and I need to talk to you.”
“I’m not walking away.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
She pursed her lips. “You,” she said, pointing a finger for emphasis, “need to find a woman.”
A flash of Darla whipped through me like someone unrolling a long piece of silk and letting it ride on the wind.
“I have plenty of women.”
“Not the ones you buy in bars after your concerts.”
“Buy?”
“With a few drinks.”
“That’s not how it works, Mom.”
“You’re telling me the floozies don’t hit on you after you do your thing?” She waved her hands like she was shooing gnats. My thing. That’s how she referred to Random Acts of Crazy. Just a thing. A trifling. Something that got in the way of my future law career.
“Sure they do, Mom. I’ve got the diseases to prove it.” I smiled and showed way more teeth than normal.
Alarm took over her face, perfect eyebrows arched up. Ah. The Botox had worn off. “You’re using condoms, aren’t you? We’ve taught you from day one that you can’t get diseases. You just can’t. With your heart condition—”
“I don’t have a heart condition.”
Her face twisted into a snarl of disbelief. “Don’t you tell me you don’t have a heart condition, Joseph Herbert Ross! I was there the day they cut you out of my body, blue as could be, and resuscitated you in the surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I was there when the doctor came in and told me you’d survived, but you would need life-saving open heart surgery to save you. I was there when some doctor who had to pretend he was God for hours and hours, cutting and sewing your little veins and arteries the size of sewing thread. I was there when the pediatric cardiologist explained more than I ever needed to know about infant heart conditions, so don’t you dare say—”
“I had a heart condition, Mom. Had. I don’t have one now.” I pulled my shirt up and exposed the still-distinct scar tissue. My finger slid down the long, ragged white line. “Had. It’s done. You’ve been treating me like I’m a fragile infant for twenty-four years.”
“Because you are!”
“Only in your head. Not in reality.”
“And you need a good woman to make everything better,” she added, as if that were part of this conversation. The non-sequitur threw me off. Damn it. It shouldn’t. A good lawyer stays in the moment at all times, ready for whatever logic—good, bad, or nonexistent—is thrown their way.
“What the fuck does a woman have to do with my heart condition?”
“See! You admit it. You have one.”
“I hate you.”
She didn’t even react. “You always say that when I’m right.”
“No. I say it when I hate you.”
She stood on tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll start asking my friends at the celiac disease fundraiser if they have any daughters in their twenties we can match with you.”
“What? Now you’re a matchmaker? And what—wait—celiac disease? You have celiac disease now?” Mom self diagnosed herself with everything. Everything except for obsessive compulsive disorder. That, she insisted, she most certainly did not have. She just noticed more than other people. Was more observant, and therefore needed a higher level of attention to detail in her life.
“I don’t have celiac, although since I stopped eating gluten my stools have really improved.”
“Along with your hymen.” At what point did the conversation go from my alleged heart condition to mom’s shit?
Her face tightened. “Stop joking about my vagina. It’s misogynistic.”
“I see. I’m sexist for making fun of your retro, anti-feminist surgery.”
Her hand went to her heart. “Anti-feminist? Me! I’m not anti-feminist. I marched at the ’89 pro-choice rally in D.C. You can’t call me anti-feminist.”
“You got surgery that reconstructs a symbol of oppression for women throughout millennia, a tiny membrane that represents a woman’s purity and, therefore, value in a society and you claim it’s not anti-feminist?” I didn’t give a shit about this topic, but it was fun putting her in the hot seat.
“I did it for fun.”
“Fun? Oh. Right. Most moms have wine night but my mother goes to the gynecologist and spreads her legs for fun.”
Paul happened to pick that exact moment to approach us with a question. His face was a mask of horror. Poor guy. Ten years of working for Mom and Dad should have made him hardier, though.
“Yes?” Mom snapped.
“Uh, all the joint compound on the market has gluten in it.”
“WHAT? I can’t have that in my bathroom, inhaling the fumes.” Her eyes narrowed. “Keep trying.”
“Mom, I thought gluten was only a problem if you ate it.”
“No—any contact with the body,” she said with a sniff, as if there were gluten right now somewhere in the room. “I have carefully combed through all my cosmetics, hair supplies—even the lube we use for sex is gluten free now.”
Paul turned a sickly shade of green.
“Were you this careful with your surgery?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are your stitches gluten free? The ones the surgeon put in you?”
Her eyes flew wide open and she grasped my arm as if she were drowning. “My God, no! Oh, Joey, let me call. He may have to redo the surgery all over again!” She darted out of the room, already on the phone and demanding to speak with her surgeon as her footsteps pattered down to silence.
Paul and I looked at each other.
“Surgery?” he finally asked.
“You really want to know?”
Paul paused and thought for a good few seconds. “Nah.”
“Smart man.”
CHAPTER 3
Darla
“You want me to go to dinner at your parents’ house tomorrow?”
“Yes.” We were in the afterglow, cuddled naked in bed. Joe was on the other side of me and his entire body tensed up.
“Why now?” he asked in a choked, angry voice. “Why would your parents do this?”
Trevor sighed. “Mom says no
w that we’re headed toward twenty-five it’s time to think about real life. Futures.”
“We’ve been primed for our futures since we were two and getting ready for Montessori preschool,” Joe snapped. But I could tell he was troubled by something else. Something more. Not just what Trevor was saying. I also knew not to pry. Not just yet. Eventually I could get whatever was coiled up inside him to come slither out. And not just his cock. The guy had emotions, even if he liked to deny it and pretend he didn’t. But teasing them out was as hard as getting a four year old to leave Chuck E. Cheese.
And involved as much tantrumming.
“Don’t snap at me. I’m just the messenger.”
Now, all that stuff about knowing not to pry? Just because I have some wisdom after nearly two years with these guys doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes do stupid, impulsive things. Like saying:
“I think Trevor should tell his mom and dad to invite you, too.”
“Me? Why?”
“’Cause if I’m Trevor’s girlfriend, then you’re his...”
(Even I knew not to say boyfriend)
“...something.”
Joe sat up just enough to look at Trevor across my naked body and say, “You’re my something. Isn’t there a new Hallmark holiday for that? Happy Something’s Day.”
“Let’s invent it if it doesn’t exist. I can give my something a something.”
I whapped Joe’s slick chest. He had less hair than Trevor, but his muscles were tighter. Each rib muscle was so well defined it was like one of those late night informercial guys with the knives had hand carved him.
“You know what I mean,” I protested.
“You are my something,” Trevor sang, replacing the word “sunshine” for my ill-thought-out term.
“Hello, Justice Scalia. Why, yes, I’d like to introduce you to my Something. This is Trevor.”
“Uh, you got that backwards,” Trevor said smugly. “If anyone’s introducing anyone to a Supreme Court Justice, it’ll be me.”