The Tao of Pam: Pam of Babylon Book # 6

by Suzanne Jenkins

  Megan fell asleep in Lisa’s arms while she was watching Ed, waiting for him to answer her. When was the last time they had sex? He couldn’t remember. One time blurred into the next. She was never satisfied. If he tried to do it after they’d turned the lights out, she complained that he’d waited until she was almost asleep. If he reached for her in the morning, she made him get up and brush his teeth. After Megan was born, even though she started taking birth control pills, she made him wear a condom so she didn’t have “all that goo flowing out of me.” Lisa wanted a production. He couldn’t just roll over and start to play with her. No, he had to woo her first and then tell her how wonderful she was, and finally, when she said it was time, he could get in and get it over with.

  He’d taken to masturbating, something that was completely foreign to him in the past. It baffled him that a marriage to a lovely young woman would reduce him to jacking off in the shower or in the parking lot at school. But she was waiting for an answer. He would just make up a time rather than admit he couldn’t remember.

  “We did it right after Easter,” he said.

  Lisa, smirking, shook her head. “It was closer to Valentine’s Day,” Lisa said smugly. “We haven’t done it in almost four months.”

  He sighed. “So what’s the answer, Lisa? What can I do that will make you happy?” He rolled over to look at her again, glancing around the area first to make sure they weren’t being observed. “Nothing I do is right. I can’t even leave my sperm behind without you complaining.”

  Gasping, Lisa leaned toward him. “That’s so not true, Ed! I love you. I want you to make love to me. I’m so sorry if I’ve given you the impression that you can’t do anything right. How awful that I’ve made you feel that way.”

  He could see he’d upset her, and in the past he’d have smoothed it over to ensure there’d be no argument. But today, he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

  “Think of the numbers of times I’ve come to bed at night and turned to you. It’s never enough that I just want to do it. No, we have to meet certain parameters first. Am I clean shaven; are my teeth cleaned. Once you even asked me if I’d washed behind my balls.”

  “Ed, I never said those words!”

  Ed fell back on the blanket and started laughing. “I think you did, Lisa. And more. I have a checklist of things I have to do before you’ll let me enter your precious box.”

  Lisa gasped a last time, struggling to her feet with a sleeping baby and running through the sand to the house. Ed didn’t go after her as he would have in the past when he guessed she was upset. They were at a crisis, and it needed to play itself out. But then he imagined his parents standing on the veranda as Lisa rushed by with the baby.

  “Oh hell,” he mumbled, gathering up their beach paraphernalia. By the time he got to the house, she’d calmed down, and his mother was holding the baby again. Ed went into the kitchen to see if there was any food put out for lunch yet, but the counters were clear.

  “I think I’ll run uptown and get lunch. Does anyone want anything?”

  Pam picked up pen and paper to make him a list. “Do you mind running into Organic Bonanza?” she asked, referring to the local grocery store. “I could use a few things for dinner tonight.”

  “I’ll go for you as soon as I get dressed,” Ed replied. He didn’t ask Lisa if she wanted to go with him, and she didn’t engage him at all. He came out in his jeans and T-shirt and took the list from Pam with a wad of bills. She went over each item with him as if he’d never shopped before, but he patiently waited for her to finish.

  “Take my car,” Pam said. “It’s got a full tank of gas.” She went to the key rack in the mudroom, took a set of keys for her luxury SUV, and handed them off.

  Ed noticed a snobbery growing in him that surfaced when he was at the beach house, a consciousness that others were observing him with a little admiration and maybe even jealousy. His wife was gorgeous and wealthy, and the benefits were showering down upon him, no longer kind Father Ford, good Catholic boy from Mt. Holly, New Jersey, whose father worked at the local garage as a mechanic for thirty years and whose mother was the lunchroom lady at the elementary school.

  As he drove past the charming cottages and sandy streets of Babylon, he remembered the day of his ordination, prostrating himself on the floor before the bishops. He felt doubtful about being a success at a spiritual life before he even took the vows. But his parents had prepared him for a life of devotion, insisting he go on goodwill missions to the soup kitchen in town and across the ocean in Haiti with a group from their parish.

  Being a priest meant Ed could hide from the world. As a little boy, he wasn’t comfortable in his own skin unless he was alone. “Go out and play with the other children,” his mother would encourage him. She’d enroll him on the sport teams and in Boy Scouts, anything to get him outdoors.

  “Leave the boy alone,” Big Ed said. “You’re always after him. Let him do what he wants.”

  He’d be standing in the corner of the kitchen by the back door, or on the bottom step of the steep staircase in their old Colonial house, preparing to escape from the family as soon as he was released.

  “Eddie, you want to be with the other boys, don’t you?” Gladys would ask. She’d heard of families of boys in which they’d become close friends, but her boys seemed to really dislike each other, even as small children. Ryan loathed Ed from the time he was a toddler, biting him or kicking, stealing his toys and hiding them. The older boys made fun of Ed, calling him a dunce and goofy, to the point that Big Ed took a closer look at his son.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with him,” he said to Gladys.

  “He’s bright and well behaved,” Gladys said defensively. “What more could you ask for?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t fit in. I’ve never seen a kid withdraw from his own family before.”

  “And now you’re an expert on children. Will wonders never cease,” Gladys said, tying an apron around her waist. “I’ve five kids to raise in this tiny house. Do you think you could stop with the insults? It’s not making it easier.”

  “I get it,” Big Ed said, settling into his spot at the kitchen table with the Philadelphia Inquirer spread out on the table and his sixth cup of coffee. “All I’m good for here is a dern paycheck.”

  “Eddie, you know that’s not true. But don’t bash my boys.”

  “I’m their father,” he said, hurt. “If I can’t have an opinion, no one should. I’m telling you, there’s something wrong with that boy, and it’s not because he’s been set apart to be a priest.”

  After a childhood in which Ed felt he was a disappointment to his family because of his inept sports ability and shy personality, the experience of being an altar boy would change everything. The first time he saw an altar boy come out of the sacristy, wearing a cassock and surplice with ruffles around his neck, he knew he wanted to wear the garb, too. After he received his first Holy Communion, Ed approached his mother about serving, and she took him to the priest.

  “My son here wants to be an altar boy,” she said, beaming.

  The priest tilted his head to look at Ed through the bottom of his glasses. “Is that right?” he asked.

  Ed nodded his head quickly.

  “Why is that?”

  Ed looked up at his mother, red creeping up his neck onto his face. “I want to serve God,” he said in a whisper. “Carry the gospel book up to the pulpit, and help the bishop with communion.”

  “Okay, let me talk to your mother now, young man. Go out in the hallway.”

  Ed ran out the office door and sat down on a wooden chair set along the wall. It had an attached writing desk on the right side, and Ed took a small matchbox car out of his pocket and started running the car over the arms and back of the chair.

  “Is he retarded?” the priest asked. It wasn’t uncommon in his parish for the parents of troubled or special needs children to ask for more involvement for their sons.

  Gladys Ford was indi
gnant. “I should say not! Edward is a good student, and you won’t find a more well-behaved boy in his catechism class.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t proper for a parishioner to go off on the parish priest, no matter how much of a donkey’s ass he was being. Gladys couldn’t wait to get home and tell Big Ed. When they got home, he knew she meant business when she pushed him into the tiny room they used as a bedroom, right off the kitchen.

  “What’s going on woman,” he said, moaning. “Oh Jesus, you didn’t make trouble up at the boy’s school, did you?”

  “No, not at school, but I went to the parish house and had a talk with His Reverend. He asked me if Ed was retarded!”

  Big Ed pulled the door shut just in case little ears were listening. “I tell you, he sees what I’m seeing. The boy needs help. There’s something not right about him.”

  “Ed, he’s special, but in a good way. I’m telling you there is nothing wrong with our son.”

  But after that day, both parents made Ed’s transition from failed athlete to honored altar server a priority. And when Ed decided to go to seminary, Gladys took a babysitting job in the evenings and Big Ed worked weekends at the garage to make sure there was money for college. He’d major in elementary education because he had the temperament and patience for little children. But serving as a priest was his biggest desire. He longed to read passages from the Bible to spiritually bereft parishioners. As it turned out, he’d end up catering to women like his mother whose boys were dreamers, just like he’d been. Bored to tears, sick of trying to keep the student quota, he left when the parish closed and the school shortly after, rather than brazing an inner city parish in Chicago. Big Ed and Gladys were heartbroken at first, and then furious when they learned his reason.

  “Jesus,” Ed yelled. Gladys covered her face and genuflected. “At least if you could have told us you’d uncovered abuse or corruption, we’d have understood you leaving. But because you didn’t want to go to Chicago? That’s asinine, boy. It’s crazy.”

  “There was never anything like that, anything corrupt or ugly. It just closed because no one was attending. You saw what it was like on Sunday. Ten people in the sanctuary can’t tithe enough to keep a building warm in the winter, let alone run an entire parish.” He knew he was in for more scrutiny by his parents, until he met Lisa.

  Now, two days before the big party, Ed was going through the drive-thru window at Taco Bell. He drove to the back of the building away from the street, where he could eat in private. The food was soothing, comfort food. He finished eating and put his head back on the headrest. The car was comfortable, like a big soft recliner. He’d looked forward to sleeping on the beach until his mother intervened.

  He wondered if Lisa had planned to have her little sex talk all along, or if Gladys’ interruption with the baby gave her the opportunity. They’d never talked about sex before. She had her veiled complaints and voiced them, hidden in sarcasm or in hints. After the first glorious days of sexual exploration, he thought it was normal for them to fall into a routine. But she wanted it like the old days, the early days of their relationship, and he was just too tired. He wasn’t bored already, was he? It wasn’t possible. He’d been a virgin and a pure one at that, having never even touched himself inappropriately until after he was married. Some guilt played into it, he was sure. They had sex before they were married, though. He was trying desperately to shed the restrictions his old faith, a faith of rules and sin, had placed upon him.

  For an innocent second he imagined his wife’s hands on his body. The first time they showered together and she took a bar of soap to lather up his crotch. The sensation was so unexpected, the tang of the soap and the softness of her hands; he felt the blood rush to his penis. He opened his eyes and looked around; there was no other car back where he was beside the dumpsters. Guiltily, he unzipped his jeans and started to stroke his penis. Then he really got into it. He thought for a moment about opening a catsup packet to use as lubricant, but didn’t know how he’d explain the mess in his underpants to his vigilant wife. Grabbing a napkin just as he was ready to come, a knock on the window made him jump up so high that if he hadn’t kept his seat belt on, he’d have broken his neck on the ceiling of Pam’s luxury SUV.

  The pace in Pam’s house was picking up exponentially as more family arrived for the long weekend. The day of the party was still two days away, but her sisters were coming for the entire time, as were the elders, Bernice and Nelda.

  Pam sent a car to pick them up at their posh retirement center. The nurse in charge that day was having a difficult time getting the women to understand they were only going to be gone for three days, and it wasn’t necessary to take all of their clothing and belongings. “Just pack for a nice summer weekend,” she continually reminded them. “You can take your jewelry boxes if you want, but it might be easier to lock them in your room safe.”

  Bernice turned to the young woman and, with her nose in the air, smirked. “What absolute good would it be to keep our jewelry locked up in a safe to which the entire nursing staff has the combination?” She turned to Nelda. “I guess they think we’re daft.”

  Nelda laughed, but she looked at the nurse with compassion. “It’s no problem for us to take the boxes to my daughter’s house, but thank you for the reminder.”

  The nurse shrugged her shoulders and left the room.

  “Imagine, that idiot thinking we’d leave all of our jewels behind for the likes of her to pilfer,” Bernice said. Her jewelry box was full of junk and costume jewelry; Pam took anything of value home for safekeeping.

  Nelda patted her hair, checking her make up again. Their personal helper, Annabelle, had a pierced nose ring and purple hair, but she managed to get Nelda’s makeup down perfectly. “I think I look better today than I have all year,” she said.

  “What are we going to do tomorrow?” Bernice said, worried. “We’ll have to do it ourselves.”

  “Let’s be careful of our hair. We can get away without washing it for a weekend, can’t we?”

  “Well, if we don’t move, maybe. But what about our makeup?” Bernice said.

  “Pam will help us,” Nelda said smugly. “She’s always been real good at helping me. I can’t wait to get there. Lisa will have the baby, and hopefully Brent will come.”

  “I wish she’d invite Bill’s family,” Bernice said, referring to her son Bill, Jack’s younger brother. He was in jail for five years for kidnapping Sandra. Or so she said. “Poor Ann and those little boys. I haven’t seen them in over a year.”

  Nelda didn’t reply; Ann was furious with Bill’s family for “abandoning her and the boys.” The less said the better, Nelda thought.

  “So, how do I look?” Nelda bravely asked Bernice. “This dress is a favorite from when Frank was alive.”

  Bernice looked her up and down, frowning. “You should have buried it with him,” she said. “It’s not only out of style, it’s made of rayon. No one wears rayon anymore, especially in the summer. You’ll wrinkle up like a prune if it’s hot at the beach.”

  “Thank you, Bernice,” Nelda replied. “Ask a stupid question and you might get a stupid answer.”

  Bernice turned around in her chair. “Don’t tell me you’re offended now,” she said, exasperated. “I only speak the truth.”

  Nelda turned from side to side in the mirror. “Maybe you’re right,” she said, defeated. She walked to the closet and dug out an old culotte dress made of polyester, with a zip-up front. “What about this?” She held it up for Bernice to see.

  “Oh, my God. That thing should’ve been thrown out in the seventies. What will you do if you have to pee?”

  Nelda went back to the closet, at a loss. “What do I usually wear?” she asked. “Suddenly, I’m a prisoner of the housedress genre. It’s from living in this place all the time. We don’t even really need to get dressed if we don’t want to.”

  Bernice stood up carefully. “Stop it. You always look nice with your neat pants and blouses. Why are you trying to ch
ange your look for a picnic? Just wear what you always do. There’s nothing wrong with housedresses, either. With your heels and stockings, you know just how to dress up!” Trying for the nice Bernice, the friendly Bernice, she could see her negative comments were beating down Nelda, and that wasn’t her goal. She needed her friend to stay positive so that when Bernice needed encouragement, it would be forthcoming. No telling how awful it would be if they were both rock bottom at the same time, which had almost happened once.

  Nelda’s daughter Marie had died and left behind baby Miranda to be cared for by Nelda and the baby’s father, Steve. But Nelda had a fall and was hospitalized, and Steve fled, leaving the baby with Sandra. Shortly after he took off, he was killed in a car wreck, and that day was the closest Bernice and Nelda had ever had in which they were both despondent at the same time. It took weeks before either one felt better.

  Now, even the hardcore Bernice knew that she would be lost without Nelda’s companionship. And although she sometimes slipped into her haughty matron role, she knew it couldn’t last long, that she must snap out of it for Nelda’s sake.

  The nurse reappeared. “Your driver’s here,” she said. “Can I start taking your bags out?”

  Nelda changed into a brown shirtwaist dress with pumps and jewelry to compliment. Bernice gave her the thumbs-up as she walked into the sitting room.

  “He should get in here and carry the bags himself,” Nelda said, testy. “I’m sure my daughter is paying a fortune for this ride.”

  The nurse ignored her and started dragging bags out to the hallway.

  “Okay, Bernie, ready or not,” Nelda said.

  Bernice took one last look around the room. “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. This is definitely going to be different than it has been in the past. It will be the first picnic I’ve been to since Jack died.”