Dirty

Marcy, despite her appearance and occasional dumb-blonde performance, is anything but stupid. She reached at once for my hand and closed her fingers over mine before I could pull it away. She squeezed my hand and let go fast enough to keep me from startling.

“Hey,” she said softly. “It’s all right. We all have buttons.”

Right then, at that moment, I had the chance to make Marcy my friend. A real one, not a business acquaintance. I have stood on the edge of so many things, so many times, and I most always back away. If there is a time when telling the truth will open a door, I lie. If a smile will forge a connection, I turn my face.

But this time, surprising myself and probably her, I didn’t.

I smiled at her. “Tell me about your date last night.”

She did. In detail enough to make me blush. It was the best lunch I’d ever had.

When it was time for us to go to our separate offices, she stopped me with another squeeze of my hand. “You should come out with me sometime.”

I let her squeeze my hand because she was so earnest, and we’d had such a good time. “Sure.”

“You will?” She squealed, the hand squeeze turning into an impromptu, full-length hug that made my entire body stiffen. Marcy patted my back and stepped away, and if she noticed that her embrace had turned me into a wooden effigy, she said nothing. “Great.”

“Great.” I smiled and nodded.

Her enthusiasm was infectious, and it had been a long time since I’d had a girlfriend. Any sort of friend. I caught myself humming later, at my desk.

Euphoria doesn’t last under the best circumstances, and when I pushed open my front door to find the light on my answering machine blinking steadily, mine vanished.

I don’t get many calls at home. Doctors’ offices, sales calls, wrong numbers, my brother Chad…and my mother. The red number four mocked me as I dumped my mail on the table and hung my keys on the small hook by the door. Four messages in one day? They had to be from her.

Hating your mother is such a cliché comedians use it to make audiences laugh. Psychiatrists base their entire careers upon diagnosing it. Greeting card companies stick the knife in further by making consumers feel so guilty about the way they really feel about their mothers, they’ll willingly pay five dollars for a piece of paper with some pretty words they didn’t write, echoing a sentiment they don’t feel.

I don’t hate my mother.

I’ve tried to hate my mother, I really have. If I hated her, I might be able to put her out of my life at last, be done with her, put an end to the torture she provides. The sad fact remains, I haven’t learned to hate my mother. The best I can do is ignore her.

“Ella, pick up the phone.”

My mother’s voice is a nasal foghorn, bleating her disdain as a warning to all the other ships to stay away from me, the reason for her disappointment. I can’t hate her, but I can hate her voice, and the way she calls me Ella instead of Elle.Ella is a waif’s name, an orphan sitting in the cinders. Elle is classier, crisper. The name a woman called herself when she wanted people to take her seriously. She insists on calling me Ella because she knows it annoys me.

By the fourth message she was detailing how life didn’t seem worth living with such an ungrateful excuse for a daughter. How the pills the doctor prescribed for her nerves weren’t working. How she was embarrassed to have to ask Karen Cooper from next door to go to the pharmacy for her when she had a daughter who should be quite capable of taking care of her, but for the fact she refused.

She had a husband who could go for her, too, but she never seemed to remember that.

“And don’t forget!” I jumped at the suddenness of her voice ringing out from the small speaker. “You said you’d visit soon.”

There was a brief moment of hissing static at the end of her message as though she’d hung on the line, convinced I was really there and ignoring her, and if she waited long enough she’d catch me out.

The phone rang again as I looked at it. Resigned, I picked it up. I didn’t bother to defend myself. She talked for ten minutes before I had the chance to say anything.

“I was at work, Mother,” I managed to interject when she paused to light a cigarette.

She greeted my answer with an audible sniff of disdain. “So late.”

“Yes, Mother. So late.” The clock showed ten after eight. “I take the bus home, remember?”

“You have that fancy car. Why don’t you drive it?”

I didn’t bother to explain yet again my reasons for keeping a car in the city but using public transportation, which was faster and easier. She wouldn’t have listened.

“You should find a husband,” she said at last, and I bit back a sigh. The tirade was close to ending. “Though how you ever will, I don’t know. Men don’t like women who are smarter than they are. Or who earn more money. Or—” she paused significantly “—who don’t take care of themselves.”

“I take care of myself, Mother.” I meant financially. She meant spa treatments and manicures.

“Ella.” Her sigh sounded very loud over the phone. “You could be so pretty…”

I looked into the mirror as she talked, seeing the reflection of a woman my mother didn’t know. “Mother. Enough. I’m hanging up.”

I imagined the way her mouth pursed at such harsh treatment from her only daughter. “Fine.”

“I’ll call you soon.”

She snorted. “Don’t forget, you promised to come visit.”

The thought made my stomach fall away. “Yes, I know, but—”

“You have to take me to the cemetery, Ella.”

The woman in the mirror looked startled. I didn’t feel startled. I didn’t feel…anything. No matter what my reflection showed.

“I know, Mother.”

“Don’t think you can weasel out of it this year—”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

I disconnected her, though she still squawked, and immediately dialed another number.

“Marcy. It’s Elle.”

Marcy, bless her, revealed nothing but pleased surprise at my desire to take her up on her invitation to go out after work. It was exactly the reaction I needed. Too much enthusiasm would have made me rethink; too little would have made me cancel.

“The Blue Swan,” she said confidently, like she was reaching for my hand to lead me across a bridge swaying over an abyss. In a way she was. “It’s small but the music is good and the crowd’s eclectic. The drinks are pretty cheap, too. And it’s not a meat market.”

So kind of her, really, to keep assuming I was afraid of men. She didn’t know I had once slept with four different men in as many days. She didn’t know it wasn’t sex that scared me.

Her kindness made me smile, though, and we made plans for after work on Friday. She didn’t question my change of mind.

Still staring at the woman in the mirror, I hung up the phone. She looked as if she was going to cry. I felt bad for her, that woman with the dark hair, the one who only ever wore black and white. The one who might have been pretty if she’d only take care of herself, if only she weren’t smarter, if only she didn’t earn more money. I felt sorry for her but envied her, too, because she, at least, could cry and I could not.

Chapter 02

A figure in black waited for me when I got home from work on Thursday night. Black sweatshirt, hood pulled up over black-dyed hair. Black jeans and sneakers. Black-polished nails.

“Hi, Gavin.” I put my key into the lock as he stood.

“Hi, Miss Kavanagh. Can I give you a hand with that?” He took my bag before I had time to protest and followed me inside. He hung it neatly on the hook by the door. “I brought your book back.”

Gavin belongs to the neighbors on my left side. I’d never met his mother, though I’d often seen her leaving for work. I’d heard raised voices a few times through our shared walls, and it made me conscious about keeping my own television turned low.

“Did you like it?”

He shrugged and set the book on the table. “Not as much as the first one.”

I’d lent him my copy of C. S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. “Lots of people only read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Gav. Do you want the next one?”

At fifteen Gavin was a typical Goth wannabe with his Jack Skellington wardrobe and liberal use of eyeliner. He was a nice kid, though, who liked to read and didn’t seem to have many friends. He’d shown up at my door about two years earlier, wanting to know if he could mow my grass. Since I had a patch of grass about the size of a small compact car, I didn’t need a lawn boy. I’d hired him, anyway, because he’d looked so sincere.

Now he spent more time borrowing from my library and helping me strip wallpaper and sand floors than he did on my sad excuse for a lawn, but I liked him. He was quiet and polite and far cheerier than any Goth kid should have been. He was good, too, with tasks I found too tedious to tackle, like scraping the wallpaper paste residue left behind when we peeled off two decades worth of home decor from my dining room walls.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get it back to you by Monday.”

He followed me to the kitchen, where I put a box of chocolate cookies on the table. “Whenever you get it back to me is fine.”

He helped himself to a cookie. “Do you need any help stripping tonight?”

We looked at each other as soon as the words had escaped his lips, and I blinked. He looked stricken. I had to turn around so as not to embarrass him with my laughter.

“I’m done,” I managed to say. “I could use some help priming the drywall, though, if you’d like to help.”

“Sure, sure.” He sounded relieved.

I pulled out a frozen pizza and put it in the oven. “How’ve you been, Gav? I haven’t seen you for a few days.”

“Oh. My mom…she’s getting married again.”

I nodded, pulling out plates and glasses to set the table. We didn’t always talk much, Gavin and I, which I think suited both of us fine. He helped me renovate my house, and I paid him with cookies and pizza, with books and with a place to go when his mother was out, which seemed to be quite often.

I made a noncommittal noise as I poured milk into the glasses. Gavin got up to get the napkins from my cupboard and set out two. He washed his hands before he sat back at the table. His black polish had chipped.

“She says this guy’s the one.”

I glanced at him as I set out grated cheese and garlic powder. “That’s nice for her.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“Will you be moving?”

He looked up, dark eyes wide in a pale face. “I hope not!”

“I hope not, too. I still have an entire dining room to paint.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back after a moment.

I didn’t have to be a mind reader to see something was bothering him, nor a genius to figure out what it was. I could have played the part of mentor. Asked him sympathetic questions. We didn’t have that type of relationship, though, the sort that shared secrets or heartfelt revelations. He was the boy who lived next door and helped me around the house. I don’t know what I represented to him, but I doubted it was a guidance counselor.

The buzzer went off on the oven, and I served us both sizzling slices of pizza. He added garlic powder. I used the grated cheese. We ate discussing the book I’d lent him and debating whether or not the next episode of the cop show we both liked was going to reveal the name of the killer. Gavin helped me load the dishes in the dishwasher and put away the leftover pizza. By the time I came downstairs after changing my clothes, he’d already spread out and taped down the tarp to protect the floor and opened the can of primer.

We listened to music and painted for a few hours until he had to go home. Before he went, he browsed the shelves in my living room and picked out another book.

“What’s this one about?” He held up my battered copy of The Little Prince.

“A little prince from outer space.” That was the easy answer. Anyone who’s read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story knows there’s far more to it than that.

“Cool. Can I take this one, too?”

I hesitated. The book had been a gift. It had also sat on my shelf gathering dust for years without so much as a glance from me. “Sure. Of course.”

He gave me a real grin, then, the first of the evening. “Great. Thanks, Miss Kavanagh!”

He let himself out, and I stared for a moment at the empty space the book had left behind before I started cleaning up.

That night I dreamed of a roomful of roses and woke with a gasp, eyes wide open to the darkness. Turning on the light chased it into shadows cowering in the corners of my room but could do nothing for the darkness lingering in my thoughts. I lay in my bed for a few minutes before admitting defeat and reaching for the phone.

“House of Hotness.”

I had to smile. “Hi, Luke.”

I’ve never met my brother’s lover. They live in California, a world away from my safe nest in Pennsylvania. Chad doesn’t come home. I hate flying. So far, it’s just never worked out.

We weren’t strangers despite this, and his reply warmed me. “How’s my girl?”

“I’m fine.”

Luke clucked into the phone, but didn’t comment further. A moment later Chad got on the line. He wasn’t so taciturn.

“It’s after midnight there, sweetie. What’s wrong?”

Chad is my younger brother, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he pampers me. I settled further into my blankets and counted the cracks in my ceiling. “Can’t sleep.”

“Bad dreams?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes.

He sighed. “What’s going on, punkin? Is your mother getting on your case again?”

I didn’t bother pointing out that she was his mother, too. “No more than usual. She wants me to go with her.”

I didn’t have to tell him where. Chad made a disgusted noise, and I had no trouble picturing his expression. It made me smile, which was why I’d called him.

“You tell Puff the Magic Dragon Queen to leave you the hell alone. She can drive her own damn self wherever the hell she needs to go. She should lay off you.”

“You know she can’t drive, Chaddie.”

He launched into a tirade of cursing and colorful insults.

“Your creativity and vehemence leave me in awe,” I told him. “You are truly the master.”

“Do you feel better now?”

“I always do.”

He snorted. “What else is going on?”

I thought of the man I’d met in Sweet Heaven. “Nothing.”

Chad paused to give me time to add more, and when I didn’t, he snorted again. “Ella. Baby. Honey, love muffin. You don’t call me after midnight your time to talk to me about the Dragon Queen. You’ve got something else on your mind. Spill it.”

I love my brother with all my heart, but I wasn’t going to tell him about my sudden lustful fixation on a stranger who favored odd ties and liked black licorice. Some things are too private to share, even with someone who knows all your deepest, darkest secrets. I mumbled something about work and the house, which he seemed reluctant to accept but did, anyway.

The conversation drifted from my pathetic mental state to his work in an elder-care home, his plans to meet Luke’s family, the dog they were considering buying. He had a cozy little life, my brother. A good job. A nice house. A partner who loved and supported him. I relaxed as he talked, my body melting into my bed and sleep beginning to tease me into thinking it might return.

Then he dropped the bomb on me.

“Luke wants to talk about having kids.” His voice had dropped to a whisper.

I might suffer from occasional social awkwardness, but even I know the appropriate response to that announcement is not “What in the holy fuck are you thinking?” but rather “Oh, that sounds nice.”

I didn’t say either one. “What do you want, Chaddie?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. He says I’ll be a great dad. I’m not so sure.”

I didn’t doubt my brother would make a wonderful father. I also knew why he feared the thought. “You have a lot of love in your heart.”

“Yeah, but kids…kids need a lot of…stuff.”

“Yeah.”

We sat in silence for a few moments, separated by distance but connected by emotion. At last he cleared his throat. He sounded more like his usual self when he spoke again.

“We’re just thinking about it. I said we should get a dog first. See how we do with that.”

It was more than I’d ever wanted to commit to, a pet. “You’ll be great, Chad. Whatever you decide, you know I’m here for you.”

“Aunt Ella.” He laughed.

“Aunt Elle,” I corrected.

“Elle,” Chad agreed. “Love you, bunny muffin.”

As far as pet names went, bunny muffin was among the more bizarre. I didn’t quarrel with it. “Love you, too, Chad. Good night.”

We disconnected and I settled back onto my pillows, my mind whirling with his news. A child? My brother…a father?

I fell back to sleep with visions of laughing babies in my head, which was marginally better than the dreams of red roses.

Friday came faster than I’d expected. I’d never been to The Blue Swan, but it was everything Marcy had said. More an intimate-coffee-shop setting with a dance floor than a dance club, it featured a steady pulse of electronic dance music, soothing blue lights and soft couches, an interesting array of drinks and stars scattered across the black-painted ceiling.

Marcy introduced me to her new beau, Wayne. He looked like the junior executive he was, complete with a hundred-dollar haircut and trendy designer tie, plain, without skulls and crossbones. He shook my hand and, to give him credit, did not overtly check out my breasts. He even bought my first margarita.

Marcy grinned. “Planning on getting wild, Elle?”

“Ah, one drink’s not a big deal. Not everyone’s a lush like you, babe.” What might have been condescending sounded fond from Wayne, his arm outstretched along the bench behind her to toy with the long, curling strand of her hair. “Trust me, Elle, we’ll be carrying Marcy out of here.”

Marcy made a face and nudged him, but didn’t look displeased. “Don’t listen to him.”

“Hey, so long as it gets me laid,” Wayne said, “I don’t care how drunk you get—”

She slapped him in earnest this time. “Hey!”

She sent me an apologetic glance, but I shrugged, not as embarrassed as I think she expected. The fact was, I liked drinking too much to be a hard drinker. I liked the oblivion, the way a few drinks softened the edges of my mind and chased away even the ever-present need I felt to count, catalog and calculate.

Alcohol is the noose with which my father keeps trying to hang himself. I understand why he does it. He is, after all, married to my mother. Now, retired and in his sixties, drinking is my father’s career and hobby all in one. Maybe it’s his shield. I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. We aren’t the only family with a white elephant in the living room, but who ever cares about anyone else’s family when their own is the one they have to live with?

“So, you work with Marcy?” Wayne earned points for what appeared to be sincere interest.

“Yes. She’s in public accounting and I’m in corporate, but we both work for the same company.”

Wayne grinned. “Me, I’m in murders and executions.”

“Wayne!” Marcy rolled her eyes. “He means—”

“Mergers and acquisitions. I got it.”

Wayne looked impressed. “You know American Psycho.”

“Sure.” I sipped my drink.

“Wayne thinks he’s Patrick Bateman,” Marcy explained. “Aside from that pesky bad habit of slicing up prostitutes with a chainsaw.”

“Well,” I said carefully, watching him, “nobody’s perfect.”

His smile rewarded me, and then he laughed. “Hey, Marcy, I like your friend.”

She looked at me. “Me, too.”

Sometimes you share a moment with someone that has nothing to do with where you are, or what you’re doing. Marcy and I giggled, girly in a way I wasn’t used to but enjoyed nevertheless. Wayne looked at us, back and forth, until he shook his head with a shrug at our feminine absurdity.

“To murders and executions,” he said with a lift of his beer. “And to all things materialistic and shallow.”

We toasted his words. We drank. We talked, though much of what we said had to be shouted over the music. I relaxed, letting the alcohol and music loosen my tense shoulders.

“It’s my turn,” I protested when Wayne made to order one more round of drinks.

He held up his hands. “I’m not gonna argue. My mama told me a woman’s always right. You go right on ahead, Miss Kavanagh, and buy the next round. I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity to accept a woman’s generosity.”

“Oh, ho ho,” said Marcy. “You mean you’re drunk enough you don’t feel like getting up to go to the bar.”

Wayne grinned and pulled her close for a kiss that made me feel like a voyeur. “That, too.”

That was my cue to leave them for a few moments. I needed to stand, anyway, to gauge my own level of inebriation. Two drinks took me a lot farther than they had three years ago.

A space opened up at the bar as I approached, and the bartender gave me his immediate attention. I knew he was paid to flirt as much as he was to mix drinks, but his smile still flooded me with warmth. I’m no more immune to my sense of self being reflected in the light of another’s esteem than any other woman. I smiled back and ordered two more beers and a bottle of water for myself.

“She doesn’t want that. Get her a shot of Jameson.”

I didn’t turn to face the voice that had haunted me for the past three weeks. I nodded at the ’tender waiting my approval, and he slid the shot glass toward me without another word.

“Hi,” said the man from Sweet Heaven, and I turned.

“Hi.”

The crowd had grown as the night wore on, and now it jostled us closer. He looked down at me, his smile bemused. In the blue neon light his eyes looked darker than I remembered.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

My fingers curled around the shot glass, but I didn’t lift it. “Yes.”

His gaze traced the lines of my face; I felt his look as if it was a touch. Someone pushed toward the bar behind him, nudging him forward another inch. He reached to grab my arm just above the elbow, so the sudden impact didn’t make me stumble. He didn’t let go.

“Aren’t you going to drink that?” He nodded toward the shot without taking his eyes from mine.

“I’ve reached my limit.”

More people pushed to the bar behind each of us, pressing us together. His hand slid down my arm to rest on the curve of my waist. A touch so casual anyone watching would assume we’d known each other for years. A touch so blatant it made my breath catch.

“So, you’re a good girl.”

Another man who’d called me a girl would have earned a stomp to his foot and maybe the drink in his face. For him, my mouth curved. Closer we drew, magnets attracting, one to one, without the pressure of the people around us.

“Depends on your definition of good.”

His fingers splayed against my side, his thumb drifting back and forth along the smooth fabric of my shirt. “Are you flirting with me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Do you want to do what I want?” My pulse pounded at his question, murmured directly into my ear.

We’d already aligned thigh to thigh, belly to belly. If I turned my head, our mouths would be close enough to kiss. His breath caressed my ear and the slope of my neck exposed by my upswept hair.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“I want you to drink that shot.”

I did without a second protest. It burned in my gut and shot liquid fire through every vein. He hadn’t moved anything but his hand, which now lingered at my lower back, keeping me tight against him though the crowd at the bar had eased a bit and there was no longer a need for us to remain so close together.

“Take down your hair.”

A command, but voiced as a request, and I reached to undo the clip holding it on top of my head. Released, it tumbled over my shoulders and halfway down my back. It brushed his face, still so close to mine.