by Cathy Lamb
I felt my body heat up to the simmering level when I heard his voice. Okay, the boiling level. I had seen his body naked. I had played with that body. It was divine.
“It’s beautiful.” It wasn’t an ordinary silver watering can. It was overly large, fun and creative, and it had herb designs on the sides.
“You’re beautiful, Jaden.”
Yes, that naked body of Ethan’s was mine for the pleasing and I had found it pleasing many times since our delightful afternoon in the greenhouse. He seemed happy to handle the curves I have, again and again....
We made plans for dinner that night, when Tate was at basketball practice.
Ethan came to the house.
You know how you see a steamin’ hot love scene in the movies where the kiss goes on and on, in a totally orgasmic and out-of-control sort of way? Clothes are torn off hurriedly and dropped, shoes are kicked haphazardly away, a bra is tossed, and the hero picks the heroine up in his arms and they tumble to the bed and roll and kiss and you can tell that the sex is quiveringly, outrageously blissful?
That’s what happened to me!
Me!
Jaden Bruxelle.
It was swwwweeeettt.
On Sunday I decided that I should stay in bed until twelve. I never stay in bed until twelve. I never stay in bed after seven thirty.
I don’t know how to relax, enjoy, and treat myself, which is what my mother says my problem is. “You live as if every moment of your life must be accounted for and you must be doing something productive at all times, or worrying, or planning. Lord, you are boring to yourself. No fun! Do you not realize that life is a gift? Besides, working all the time gives a woman yeast infections.”
I told her I did not have yeast infections.
She sniffed. “Working all the time also makes women shrivel.”
“Shrivel, Mother?”
“Yes. Their intestines shrivel. Causing constipation and frustration.”
“Thank you for that vital information.”
“You’re welcome. You must play, Jaden. Frolic. It’ll make your liver happy.”
“A happy liver?”
“And a happy . . . a happy bottom.”
I lit a Blueberry Bobbles candle as I laughed at my mother’s prediction of a happy bottom, then went downstairs in my robe and slippers and brewed a cup of orange spice tea. It was a gray, dreary afternoon, the rain pounding down. It was peaceful, calming. I climbed back into bed after checking on Tate, who was still sleeping.
My bedroom, with a four-poster bed, is in the corner. It used to be Faith and Jack’s bedroom. I love the ornate fireplace and the windows, two of which were added in the last fifteen years. I also have a deck for watching the sunrise, that kaleidoscope of colors growing and stretching over the horizon, like mixed and blended paints.
When I was all snuggled in, I remembered the story that Grandma Violet told Caden, Brooke, and me, on a rainy spring day, about Faith and Grace when we were little. We were right here, in this bedroom, which had been hers and Grandpa Pete’s.
“Faith and Grace hid slaves under their shop in Charleston, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, even weeks, if the slaves had been whipped to bits or injured.” She rocked in the rocking chair by the fireplace as she knitted a pink scarf, all of us at her feet, the fire dancing over her auburn and white curls.
“There were two nasty, ghastly brothers, Dwight and John Stanfield, plantation and slave owners, whom Faith and Grace had refused to marry, though the men continued to bully them. Their refusal made those men furious, mark my words, and their fury turned them into stalkers, oh, curse them! They spied on the women one night after getting drunk in a bar and saw slaves being snuck beneath the shop through the shadows.
“The men were livid, as the slaves happened to be theirs. They rammed their way into the shop, then shot through the floor, flying bullets almost hitting the slaves. The slaves shook like dying, dry leaves in the wind as they faced their masters.” Grandma Violet caught our mesmerized gazes. “Faith and Grace were lovely, elegant, red-haired ladies with fiery tempers who would have shot those two clean through if they’d had the chance and not looked back, but they were stuck. Stuck like fish in a barrel.” She clicked her tongue as she told us the rest of the story, rain splattering the windows.
Dwight and John forced a compromise out of Faith and Grace that night. The women would marry them, live on their plantations, and they wouldn’t turn the women in, offering them freedom from jail and/or their necks cracked in a noose. Jail didn’t appeal to the women. There were dirt floors awash in vomit, body wastes, disease. There were rats, lice, putrid water. Starvation was a real possibility.
Faith and Grace didn’t want to agree to the marriages, but they had to, at least for the moment, the men had guns, they were violent and dangerous, they wanted to keep their necks from cracking.
Grandma Violet’s blue eyes filled with tears as she told us how Dwight and John whipped all the slaves to bloodiness that night in the woods, even one pregnant with Dwight’s child, and chopped off one finger of each slave so they would remember to never run away again. They made the women watch.
Two of the slaves later died from infections. “Faith and Grace were devastated.” Grandma Violet sniffled as she knit faster. “They never got over that trauma, oh, oh, those poor people! Whipped! Axed! Oh, how they cried, but Faith and Grace still hid two more slave women who arrived the next night, two babies strapped to their backs. What could they do? Where else would the women have gone? They had to help them.”
Grandma Violet stood up, agitated, then peered out the windows, straight down the column of maple trees, as if she could see Faith through the raindrops. “They started casting their spells, using the thimble, the lace handkerchief, the needle, and the timepiece. They chanted a death spell, centering their witchly powers on Dwight and John drowning in a swamp or being hit by a carriage, then they prayed for divine intervention.” Grandma Violet raised both hands to the heavens. “Divine intervention came on horseback.”
Two men rode into town on stallions. Best friends, both Irish. One was a blond giant named Jack O’Donnell, and an equally large ex-military man named Russ McLeary. The girls flirted with them as if their lives depended on it, which they did, at a town picnic over raspberry pie.
Soon Jack was smitten with Faith and Russ was sweet on Grace. The women told the men the truth about the Underground Railroad and the threats on their lives, and on an inky black night, the moon hidden in a plume of clouds, the four of them saddled up four horses, and they galloped far, far away. They were headed toward Independence, Missouri, and the Oregon Trail.
Faith and Grace’s guilt over deserting a safe haven for runaway slaves followed them for the rest of their lives, but they could not see being raped, every night, for the rest of their lives, by John and Dwight, either.
The first night the four rode long and hard, same with the next day, and the next night. Didn’t take too many nights under a white, shiny moon for love to strike, it sure didn’t. “Faith and Grace had the same eternal love for their husbands that I have for Grandpa Pete and your mother has for your father.
“Both men later touched the cross, heart, and star charms around the necks of Faith and Grace with reverence and love.” Grandma Violet patted her heart. “One would add a clover to the mix for luck, the other would add a treasure chest, for prosperity.” She gave each of us a hug, then tipped our chins up so she had our full attention. “That’s what you have to wait for in your life, dear grandchildren. A spouse who loves you beyond love, a person of goodness and character, courage, and honesty. A wife, a husband, who sees you for the treasures you all are.”
Thinking of that story, in my four-poster bed, orange spice tea in hand, I sighed happily, my hand to the cross, heart, and star charms on my necklace. I had found that same love with Ethan, yes indeed, I had.
I took Tate to play chess with Maggie.
They chatted and laughed. He beat her, spared her
not at all.
She seemed frail, but she said, “Bishop Tate, I will now challenge you to a duel.”
To which Tate grabbed two white chocolate chip cookies on her counter, intoned, “En garde, Maggie Shoes!” and they dueled with the cookies until they turned into crumbs.
“Yum, Maggie Shoes. These are delicious. Can I have six more?”
“Take all you want, Tate.”
Her roses are sticks in her yard. The leaves are brown.
They have no more color.
“What have you learned from being on the team, Tate?”
I dipped a banana into melted chocolate. On rainy nights it is my favorite treat. I don’t know why.
“I learned that I friggin’ love basketball and Billy and Bob like to shoot and Road Runner can see things with his x-ray vision. Too bad I can’t see girls’ panties through their clothes, that’d be a gift. I want to play ’til I’m ninety.”
Tate had already had two chocolate milk shakes, a plate of scrambled eggs with cheese, and a pile of grapes. He made me take a photo of him smiling, his lips holding five grapes in a row, for his blog when he was ready to post a photo of himself and General Noggin.
“Ninety-year-old men need something to do. It’ll keep you young.”
“And I learned about the guys on my team.”
“What have you learned, buddy?”
“You know Kendrick?”
“Yes, the guard.” Gecko kid.
“Yeah. His parents are divorced and his dad is in jail and won’t get out for ten years because he embezzled a bunch of money and he said they were sued and now his mom and him have no money.”
I had known that about the family. “I’m sorry to hear that. Kendrick’s a neat kid.”
“You know Jacob on my team? He has all that acne all over? He told me he thinks he’s the ugliest person on the planet. I said, ‘Hey, blondie,’ you know, ’cause he has that white-blond hair, I said, ‘Look at General Noggin, you think I’m a hot chick magnet or something? You think this body is getting jumped?’ and he laughed, and I said, ‘Man, I get laid all the time with this head of mine!’ ”
“Tate!” He laughed at my protest. I knew Jacob. The poor kid had those purplish-pink acne bumps. Being a teenager is soul-destroying sometimes.
“Baron, that tall kid with huge feet who doesn’t get to play that much because he can’t make baskets? He has dyslexia and thinks he’s dumb. I told him, ‘Man, you’re radical. You’re awesome at making people laugh, you’re good at being a friend,’ and he looked at me like I’d sprouted a third head, Mom. A third head. Bigger than General Noggin.”
“That’s because he was probably shocked at the compliment.”
“Righty you are, Boss Mom. He goes, ‘Really, Tate? You think that? You think I’m funny?’ and I said, ‘King Baron’—I called him that ’cause Baron’s a fancy name—‘you make me laugh all the time. You’re a wily comedian. You should do stand-up or something.’ And he said, ‘But I can’t write, the words get all mixed up, and I’m dumb,’ and I go, ‘You’re not dumb, you have something called dyslexia, that’s what you told me, so let’s rename it, Dreamin’ of Ecstasy, okay?’ and then he laughed and goes, ‘Okay, so I tell people I don’t have dyslexia, I have Dreamin’ of Ecstasy?’ and I said, ‘And make them call you King Baron, too.’ Then we joked the rest of the day about ecstasy.”
“Do you know what ecstasy means, Tate?”
“Yeah. It’s when I’m playing basketball, Mom. That’s ecstasy.”
“I see you understand. You’re sure getting to know those kids.”
“Yeah, I am. I think they tell me stuff they don’t tell other people because I’ve got a big head and they think that my problems are way worse than theirs.”
“And they trust you, Tate.”
“They can. My mouth is a vault. I’m telling you what they said, but someone would have to have a sword to my throat and pressing hard into my esophagus”—he used a table knife to pretend someone was stabbing him—“before I told anyone else.” He grabbed three more grapes, tossed them way up, caught two. Impressive. The third fell on the floor and rolled. He picked it up and ate it. “With this basketball team, they’re talking to me.” He picked an apple out of the fruit bowl and balanced it on his head, then balanced a second one and put four grapes between his lips. “Take a photo for my blog for when I want to introduce General Noggin.”
I took the photo. “And what about the other kids at school?”
“Now other kids are sitting with me at the cafeteria, I don’t have to go off and wait ’til everybody’s gone through the lunch line and then go quick and hide out in the corner to have lunch after most of the kids have gone so I don’t have to be a pathetic loser and sit alone. Plus, I didn’t find it fun when they lobbed their milk cartons at me or their bananas. I think they actually want to talk to me now.”
I couldn’t talk because I was all choked up. Not because of the new friends, but because of such a sad, sad picture I had in my head of my son plotting out how to eat, when to eat, where to eat, to have the least amount of embarrassment and hurt. I’d heard it before. It always hurt.
“Now I go to the cafeteria and get out my lunch sacks. I sit down at a table where maybe somebody else is sitting all alone and I say, ‘Hi, dude or dudette,’ and in thirty seconds, the whole table is all filled up and all the dudes and dudettes are talking and laughing and throwing food and stuffing grapes up their noses and making sandwich pancakes and snorting noises. Want to hear my snorting noise, Mom?” He snorted at me.
“You’re a very authentic snorting warthog choking on a hair ball.”
“Gross, Boss Mom! Yeah, we’re all snorting, and having raisin races where we see whose raisin can come closest to hitting Toby Tandem’s lunch sack and it’s fun.” He snorted again. “Toby always wins. He’s got a skill with raisins. I don’t get it. He’s a science nerd but he can throw raisins.”
“A snort-fest.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “A snort-fest. I’m hungry. I need some Alfredo Pasta Explosion.” He batted those bright blue eyes at me pleadingly.
“You have to be kidding. You can’t still be hungry. I fed you already.”
“I am still hungry. My stomach is totally empty. I’m dying of starvation. Withering. I’ll probably be dead by morning from hunger. I can hardly think. I need more and more food.”
I kissed his cheek, and he raised up those long ol’ arms and hugged me.
“Okay. I’ll make you Alfredo Pasta Explosion.”
“Yeah. That would rock. Thanks, Mom.”
I cannot resist that child.
Ethan and I had many other dates. One date was for a picnic lunch with soup, salad, sandwiches, and chocolate that he brought. There is hardly anything more romantic than a man with glasses and a sweet smile carrying a picnic basket. It was winter, but it wasn’t too cold that day, the sun shining, so I brought out a pile of blankets and we settled under a towering fir tree.
“I love you, Jaden.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I have loved you for years, and I will love you forever. I want you to know that. I will love you forever, babe.”
I nodded. My lip trembled, my face scrunched up, I’m sure my nose turned red, and I made a funny sound in my throat. The tears trembled on my lashes, then fell down my face. He did not seem to mind when I had to roll over and blow my nose like a honking turtle.
For long years now I have stuffed my emotions down, stuffed the gentle, fun, romantic part of me down, so I could deal with the many responsibilities that came with Tate’s care and health and the demands of a job that were serious and complicated. I had become too toughened up, rigid in the way I lived, because I had to be, because I had to be vigilant, because I had to protect Tate, because his medical disasters were life and death. It had kicked all frivolity, all lightness, out of my life.
I didn’t want to be tough or rigid with Ethan, ever. I wanted the frivolity of love, the lightness of life.
I put my
hand behind Ethan’s head and pulled him closer, the warmth of his body heating me from head to foot, the warmth of his love heating up a heart that had always been hopeful, but way too alone, way too lonely, for way too long. “I love you, too, Ethan.”
We piled three blankets on top of us and made love.
I tried to keep it down. It was hard to keep the noise in. I do believe I startled a blue jay.
Ethan is extremely talented at carnal activities, especially when under a pile of blankets, under a fir tree, the winter sun shining.
16
For our next meeting, Dirk brought his attorneys, Ralph Tol-loway and Nigel Pinkerton. They were expensive people from a prominent firm. I was pleased at their expense.
Dirk’s hair was slicked back, expensive designer suit buttoned up tight. His suit was a reflection of him: controlling. I’ll bet the Porsche was waiting for him. He probably masturbated in that car. Yuck.
Our attorney, Sandra Torelli with the oversized teeth, sat next to me at the conference table at the hospital. Dr. Baharri was there again, as was Sydney, and a few hospital administrators and other doctors who had been involved with Mr. Hassells, Senior’s care.
When Dirk walked in, throwing the door open as if making an impressive entrance, Sydney whispered soooo unprofessionally, “Ta-da! The egomaniacal hero with a short man’s complex on the white horse has charged in!”
Dr. Baharri said, “I will need to meditate extra long tonight.”
Sandra said, not quietly, “It’s a question of white wine or red tonight. Maybe both. I shall mix them together.”
We had the usual settling-in sorts of conversation, with Dirk huffing and puffing, the outraged son, I had killed his father, medical care was poor, what about all that morphine forced down his father’s throat, etc. He kept staring at me, his eyes wandering down my front, ticked off that I hadn’t plopped my head in his lap when I met him. My blood boiled to the point that I was surprised my skin didn’t fall off.