“Oh my God, I’m about to have an orgasm,” Edith said.
Cassie flinched. The girl behind the counter was unfazed. Only Cassie was fazed by Edith, small and sweet, whacking her clumsy new language bat against Cassie’s sensibilities.
“Dad will love them.”
Truth be told, Ben would prefer whatever was cheapest. A pile of Twinkies still in their cellophane wrappers would delight him. Ben took the joy out of gift-giving because she could see him calculate the cost of, say, a dove-gray cashmere scarf as he twined it around his neck in front of their Hanukkah bush. Whatever lay beneath the wrapping was too extravagant in Ben’s view. He’d returned that scarf, bought an electric drill, claimed he was looking forward to being handy once they moved to the East Bay. The scarf, it turned out, would have been more practical. He’d used the drill only once in the new house, to attach a bookcase to the wall in Edith’s room. When he severed an electrical wire, he called a handyman, who ended up earthquake-proofing the rest of the house.
But the cupcakes weren’t really for Ben, they were for the women in the neighborhood who would attend his surprise party with their husbands, the women who hadn’t quite accepted Cassie into their ranks, even after five years of living in Rockridge. Yes, they’d invited her to join their book club, but when she’d blurted a contrary opinion about the selection, an unsurprising novel set in Afghanistan, she’d felt them pull away. Cassie always blurted. Ben described her personality as pungent and then, when she let him know it hurt her feelings, he chided, “Oh, stop,” with a diminishing tone, as if he had no clue why the adjective upset her.
“Honesty is admirable,” Seth had agreed at another of their sessions, “but at what cost?”
At the book-club meeting, Blythe Cooper (rhymes with supper, she instructed Cassie at their introduction), wife of an orthopedic surgeon, gripped the novel in her manicured hands like a stone tablet and claimed it the best thing she’d ever read. Perhaps Cassie shouldn’t have responded, in her quietest, most careful voice, that she found the novel’s perfectly balanced shape boring, as if the novel itself had been raised in a confined space, like a veal calf. Perhaps she shouldn’t have gone on to explain that she preferred messy to symmetrical, feral to polite, because isn’t feral the truth? Her flushed cheeks and strong opinion were met with a long pause, furtive glances, and the sipping of good pinot noir from the surgeon’s wine cellar. Then, maintaining her smile-royale, Blythe said, “If one reads only to feel better about oneself, then I suppose shitty real-life stories make sense. This novel soared.” Cassie could tell by the way her hostess touched her throat that it pained Blythe to swear.
“Hello? Mother?”
Edith and the counter girl stared at Cassie, who brought her fingertips to her own throat—another moment of inertia. Then she realized what they wanted: her cupcake verdict. “You’re right,” Cassie said. “Orgasmic.”
Edith’s mouth fell open, revealing chunks of frosting in her braces. “Never-ever. Never say that word again.” The counter girl too looked pained and wouldn’t make eye contact as she wrote up the order.
On the way home, Edith informed Cassie that the counter girl was a cutter; that’s why she wore sweatbands on her wrists, to cover up new and old wounds. It knocked the wind out of Cassie. The girl worked around cupcakes. Damn it, she’d spoken to them about hope. Edith went on to say that cutters break light bulbs and slice their skin with the thin shards. “You’d have to be so shitting strong-willed to make yourself bleed like that.” The fact that Edith knew about the light bulbs and the ruse of sweatbands also shocked Cassie. Was it common knowledge because it was so common? She reached her hand toward Edith’s wrist. It must be shitting awful to be a teenager today. Edith inserted her earbuds, and tinny, flea-size Nirvana music ended their conversation. But Edith let her mom’s hand remain.
After the book-club debacle, Cassie hadn’t gone back. She was stung by the truth of Blythe’s comment. She did read to soothe the constant nattering in her head. Didn’t everyone? Maybe that was why memoirs were all the rage. If you read about triumphant drug addicts, families who lived in Dumpsters, or the brutalized children of megalomaniac alcoholics, your own mundane story didn’t seem so impossible. Maybe the women of the book club all lived perfectly orderly lives with casseroles and paid bills, appliqué and soccer games. Maybe Cassie was the only one with a seventeen-year-old son who no longer seemed to have room for her now that he had his first serious girlfriend. Maybe she was the only one who had a fourteen-year-old daughter who swore and had developed a taste for the vodka Cassie kept in the freezer for penne à la vodka, Ben’s favorite dish. Maybe she was the only one whose husband whistled in the kitchen while making her coffee every morning and accused her of being joyless. As she pulled in the driveway, even before she’d come to a complete stop, Edith jumped out and ran down the block to Pammy’s, leaving Cassie to idle in front of their home.
Thursday mornings the neighborhood women racewalked past Cassie’s dining room window, a flock of house finches dressed in their serious name-brand sports gear, arms swinging to optimize calories burned, hair confined in tidy ponytails, tugging on leashes. “Come on, Phil,” “. . . Wilson,” “. . . Larry,” she heard them say in frustration. The dogs bore manly names and were yanked away from tree trunks. Occasionally the women erupted in laughter, and Cassie felt a slight jab near her heart.
“Loneliness,” Seth had suggested. “That’s the cost of your honesty.”
Never mind the walkers; Thursdays at noon she had Seth for fifty minutes. Should she ask about the cupcakes or would it be a waste of time? She found she’d been using her fifty minutes more and more to talk about the things one normally discusses with a spouse—a funny conversation with the butcher, the rescue of a stray dog from traffic, a social blunder at the posh-mac-and-cheese dinner party. Seth hung on her every word as if he really wanted to know her. If only she didn’t have to pay someone to show that kind of interest in her life. It was pillow talk sans pillow. She sometimes left his office feeling like she needed a shower. When she told him this, he extrapolated from Cassie to women in general, saying a woman’s need to be known is as basic as a sexual urge.
Before leaving that morning, Cassie blew through her house, the usual tidy. Syrup back in the fridge, coffee spoon traces wiped from the counter, towels gathered from the floor, her son Ethan’s socks and boxers as well. Edith’s heavy-soled black boots and her science text splayed on the living room floor in front of the TV where she’d fallen asleep studying the laws of physics and watching So You Think You Can Dance, not connecting the two at all. In fact, she’d rolled her eyes with long-suffering forbearance when Cassie brought it up, the dancers’ bodies arcing through space, flouting gravity and inertia. The show was cruel, its very title a taunt. It’s so depressing what we consider entertainment. She placed Edith’s textbook on the coffee table, carried a wineglass to the kitchen. And what about that show that makes people eat disgusting things like pig snouts. What’s the entertainment value? Cassie allowed a smug smile. She had it, her entrée at Seth’s office. Each week she dreaded the moment she settled on his couch, and he appraised her with his dark eyes, hands coolly resting on his thighs, then, his voice languid and, yes, sexy, asked, “So, Cassie, what’s on your mind?” The first time she was taken aback. She’d been imagining incisive therapeutic questions that divined why she was quietly unhappy in her wonderful life and then specific directives to make everything better—walk in the mornings, volunteer, medication, keep a journal. “Cassie?” Was it his voice or the question? Whichever, she found it daunting, deciding what to say. The days her answers came easily were when she had endured some argument or disappointment she could rail against from his couch. Slow news weeks were hard. This was a slow news week; she had Edith’s minor language infractions and disturbing knowledge of cutting, and now a diatribe on reality TV.
Throughout her quiet house Cassie gathered clothes, the bathroom rug, hurrying so she wouldn’t be late. She’
d start a load of wash and then head out. Downstairs, passing through Ethan’s dim and cluttered room to the basement laundry, she smelled the tang of boy. Not a small boy’s uncomplicated scent—grass and dirt and red vine licorice—no, a mysterious yeasty smell, skin and greasy hair. She thought to open windows. Then she heard a shivery moan and in her peripheral vision caught furtive movements on the bed, arms and legs, a bare ass, tangle of blond hair, rustling, and then an OhmyfuckingGod, and a startled Alice, Ethan’s girlfriend, flew past her and up the stairs.
Cassie’s breath escaped, her ears thrummed. Amazingly her first thought was not of what she’d walked in on but of Ethan’s sheets. They were filthy. How could he bring a girl to that stinky bed? Next she thought of Alice’s extravagant car. Alice drove a Saab. Ben joked with Ethan all the time that if he planned to pursue his passion for drumming, he should keep Alice by his side. He then rolled on with his favorite comic question. You know what they call a musician without a girlfriend? Homeless. Alice’s car was cleaner than Ethan’s bed. Why hadn’t they had sex in the car like Cassie had with long-limbed Jeremy Deak? That’s what Ethan’s room smelled like, sex! A hot fistful of pennies. All of this raced through her mind and then the words came to her: in flagrante. The only Latin she knew.
Ethan sat on the bed in his hostile Miles Davis T-shirt; BITCHES BREW it screamed. A sheet covered his lap. He gaped at her from behind lush and greasy bangs. “Haven’t you heard of fucking knocking?”
Cassie started mumbling, somewhat apologetically, about not knowing they were home. But then she thought, It’s Thursday. Ethan was having sex in the basement when he was supposed to be at school. “Why are you home?” she demanded, mostly because she could think of nothing else to say. She picked up a hoodie from his floor and threw it at him. “Cover your boner.” She winced after she said it. Where did that come from? Her inner Edith?
He winced back. “Don’t converse to me about my body.”
“Don’t make it available for conversation. Alice has a car. With a back seat.”
He wasn’t listening, he was jabbing his cell with his thumbs, texting Alice, who had slammed the door when she left.
Cassie retreated up the stairs, hugging laundry to her chest. If she had it to do all over she would have knocked. Poor Alice. Cassie did not want her to be mortified. “We’ll talk about this later,” she called to Ethan.
“No, we won’t.”
“At the very least we’ll talk about condoms. Again.”
The first person she thought to tell about Ethan’s sexual activity was not her husband, the boy’s father, but Seth. And the choice didn’t even seem strange.
“What’s on your mind?”
Settled in the exact center of the long green couch, Cassie looked at her hands in her lap. Her nails were uneven, half bitten, half torn, and she slid her hands between her thighs. Over Seth’s head, a wall tapestry of swirling gentle hues offered a safe place to rest her eyes; well, a safe place for all his clients to rest their eyes. She wondered if there were dictates for therapists, maybe even a required course on creating a haven where clients would delve and reveal. The list would include couch, chairs, pillows, rugs, and heavy curtains (all in subtle hues); a bookcase, plants, objets d’art (suggestive, rustic, and, if possible, African); a not-too-discreet clock to remind everyone that time is limited; a box of tissues and a candle or maybe a small fountain for soothing burble. Check, check, check, Seth had it all. It was sweet, someone making this effort for her.
Seth waited.
Cassie felt a smile tease against her cheeks, the words trapped in her mouth like a bee. She had a sparkly bit of life to offer up into the calculated tranquillity. “In flagrante delicto,” she said.
Seth said nothing. He brought the tips of his fingers together, all ten, held right before his chest. He’d been trained to wait out silence. Cassie, whose mother was once mayor of their small town, had been trained to charm and entertain.
“Not me,” she said after she’d let the pause linger. “Ethan.”
“Ah.” He raised and lowered his head, one nod. “And?”
She told him about walking into the basement, what she’d seen.
“I guess you’re a convert to knocking now?”
“I didn’t know he . . . they were home.”
“What does it mean to you, having a son who is sexually active?”
“I’m old.”
Seth raised his eyebrows.
“He’s too young?” Her voice tilted up as if she were searching for the right answer, though of course there was no right answer. There was only her answer and why didn’t Seth tell her her answer so she didn’t have to do all this exhausting work? Ethan wasn’t exactly young, and she wasn’t exactly old. Yet there was a gaping, double-deep hole in catching Ethan in the act. Never again would he run to her, skin warm from playing, soft hair clinging to his damp face, to throw his arms around her legs. And couldn’t it still be Cassie and Ben joyfully groping, having clandestine sex in the basement? She sank deeper into Seth’s couch. Cassie was the center of absolutely no one’s life.
Silence and Seth’s fingers still pressed against each other.
“He’s having more sex than I am?” That wasn’t her voice, it was something Ben would say to get a laugh at a dinner party, she could nearly hear him, his swaggering voice, pride cloaked in self-deprecation. Why is it that men slap themselves on the back when their sons have sex? “Have you ever seen that show where people are challenged to eat disgusting things?”
Seth waited, unruffled by her diversion.
“I wonder, why do humans get pleasure from seeing other humans eat hideous food?”
“Voyeurism? Creepy gratification that they don’t have to give in to their own strange impulses, they can watch others do it for them. No-risk pleasure.”
“Creepy?” Cassie felt the bee in her mouth again. “Isn’t a person with your training supposed to withhold judgment?” She shifted her gaze from the tapestry to his high cheekbones, full lips, the skin at his jaw line beginning to hammock in a trustworthy, I-will-still-be-here-in-the-morning way, and then of course to his unflinching eyes. She blinked and the tightrope appeared, strung across from her eyes to his inquisitive and velvety eyes. She felt as if she could carefully tiptoe in those special acrobat slippers, her feet caressing the wire, one deliberate footfall after another, straight across the Persian-carpeted canyon between them. Though they had never touched (did they even shake hands on her first visit?), Cassie felt more intimate with Seth than with anyone else in her life. When she first came to him she spoke of the paradox of being so caught up in the lives of her family and yet lonely when she was in the house with them. She was the voyeur, hearing Ethan’s band practice in the basement, spying at the nauseous glow of the computer screen around Edith’s dark outline. “We don’t have game night anymore,” she’d said, realizing immediately how ridiculous she sounded. She needed a life of her own, and for now, Cassie was making it in Seth’s office, the only place where anyone said, Tell me about you, Cassie. The only place she could safely blurt.
“Well, not creepy.” He smiled. “Human.”
“So, my real question is, why do men get such a rush from their sons’ first sexual experiences? Maybe I’m speaking like someone educated by sitcoms, but it seems that TV men are either taking their sons to prostitutes or slapping their boys on the back or glorifying their own first sexual acts and then lamenting their daughters’ sexuality. Who do these men think their sons are having sex with?”
“Was that your situation?”
“My mother was always busy being reelected mayor. My father preferred to look the other way. If my sister and I talked about tampons he’d turn up the volume on the TV. I told you we had a TV in every room of our house, yes?”
“What about Ben?”
“You mean what does Ben think about Ethan and Alice? I haven’t told him yet. But Ethan and Alice have been together for nearly a year, it shouldn’t come as a shock.”
“And yet you told Ethan to cover his boner?”
Cassie winced anew. “That was messed up.”
“I just wonder why you made that choice, why you didn’t leave right away?”
A penetrating question followed by a pause and the tightwire between them slackened. Cassie lost her balance. Seth waited for her to come up with the insightful answer and she waited for him to do the same.
“Your threw a mini-tantrum with that line. Could it be that you’re threatened by Alice? Threatened that you are losing your son and that’s more than you can bear? Aren’t they doing the exact right developmental thing?”
Cassie lowered her chin, offered an ingénue pout.
“How old were you when you first had sex and what did it mean to you, to your family relationships?”
She wanted to say, How old were you? But asking him anything was taboo. These fifty minutes were solely for her. Eighteen more minutes of Cassie, Cassie, Cassie. It was unbearable and exquisite. “I was seventeen. It completely defined me for a hideous period in my life.”
His fingers came back together in front of his heart. “Hideous?”
Cassie smiled. “I’ve served up a mystery.”
“I wonder, how is being alluring benefiting you right now?”
“It’s better than being a stereotype—the clingy mother with no identity.”
“And are you? A stereotype?”
It was Cassie’s turn to wait out the silence, suppressing the sting at the back of her eyes.
Shout Her Lovely Name Page 19