It's Complicated (25 page)

Two days had gone by and she’d texted with Alex, who was finishing up a grueling twenty-four-hour shift. As her phone beeped, she hoped it was him.

Nope. The phone number showing on Josie’s screen made her stomach drop into a hole in the floor. If she had balls they would have crawled up into her abdominal cavity and pressed against her throat.

It was her mother.

A phone call from Marlene meant only one thing. She wanted money. Money for her alcohol, money for her drugs, money for cigarettes, and money for her men. Josie had ignored the last two calls she’d had, abrupt and perfunctory voicemails Marlene always left when she was determined to get something. “Josie, it’s your mom. Call me.
Click,
” had been the sum total of each. She knew that Marlene would persist, though, so against her better judgment she pressed the answer button and said, “Hello?”

“Heeeeeey, it’s my baby girl.” The smoker’s rasp rattled so deeply in Josie’s ear, she could almost smell and taste the cigarette smoke. Her mom and her aunt Cathy had plenty of things that were different about each other, but on this one, they were united. Chimneys who filled their homes with the ever-present houseguest of nicotine residue.

“What’s up, Mom?” Josie tried to keep it light. If she engaged in any possible way, this could get nasty.

“I was just thinkin’ about you, and you didn’t answer my voicemails.”

“I was on shift, Mom.”

“Oooooooh, okay.”

From the tone in her mother’s voice, Josie could tell she wasn’t drunk or high. It was a rare moment of getting what was left of the real Marlene, one to one, and a thin tendril of hope allowed itself to unwind inside her. Maybe she’d get one good conversation, after all.

“I hope you’re not overworking yourself. You know how hard that…” Marlene stumbled, and Josie could imagine her, cigarette in her right hand, waving it, as if the smoke could somehow coordinate to form the word that her stuttering brain couldn’t find.

“Yeah, nursing can be hard, Mom,” Josie helped.

“That’s right.” Marlene’s voice became more confident. “That’s right, nursing is hard, but I’m proud of my baby.”

Josie’s teeth felt like steel edges grinding against each other. “Thanks, Mom,” was all she said. She wasn’t going to fall for it and ask, “So what are you calling for?” She knew that if she did that, it could go one of two ways; she could be told “why do I need a reason to call my baby girl?” or she could be told “because I need money,” and then hear a diatribe about how she was the rich nurse who lived in Boston who didn’t send her mother enough.

Josie knew her mother’s monthly income. Between working a couple of pity shifts at the local bar, where Jerry let her work mostly to work off an ever-increasing bar tab, and survivor’s benefits from her father’s death, she knew that there was enough to at least pay the mortgage, cover utility bills and basic food. There wasn’t, though, enough to cover cigarettes, booze, and pills. When Josie had come home from college in her senior year she’d found the stash of Percocets, a hundred or more, in her mom’s top drawer. She knew enough not to ask, and she knew enough to realize that her mother was probably going to multiple doctors to get that much. Traumatic brain injury, and neck and back muscles that were permanently twisted as she recovered from the accident, gave her the perfect excuse when it came to getting pain meds. Josie’s problem was that teasing out how much of it was legitimate and how much of it was bullshit had driven her crazy for years. She couldn’t let it continue to drive her crazy, so she’d cut it off at the knees and quit wondering. Now she just tolerated the phone calls from Marlene.

“When you comin’ home next, Josie?” Marlene asked, the question a formality; she knew damn well that Josie came home once a year, typically in August.

“Oh, you know, same time.”

“You’ll be here for a week?”

“Yep.” She would spent most of that week with Darla, hanging out and chatting, and trying to convince the younger cousin to come back to Boston with her. This would be a different trip now, wouldn’t it? Because Darla could be out here soon, if Josie took the job with Laura and asked to have Darla be her assistant. Darla had a natural acceptance of the surreal that made Josie think she’d be perfect for the very unconventional dating service Laura and her guys were proposing.

The rattlings of the implications of getting Darla to move out here made her teeth hurt even more. Marlene would ask the inevitable question, “Well, if Darla can move in with you, then why can’t I?” and that was a whole conversation that Josie didn’t want to have.

“Mom, how are you doing?” Josie asked, giving her the entry that she needed.

“Ah, same old, same old here,” Marlene said. “You know, I’ve been having a hard time with the house, though.”

Here it goes
, Josie thought—the house was going to be her excuse.

Sometimes it was the car, sometimes it was her health, sometimes it was Darla and Cathy. When they were brought up it was easy to give Darla a call and say “So, my mom tells me your cat died,” and Darla would say, “Oh, the fifth one this year?” and they’d laugh, because who else can you call when you need to talk about your crazy mom, and nobody else has a crazy mom. Aunt Cathy wasn’t quite crazy, but she was depressed, and it meant that Josie and Darla could commiserate.

“What’s up with the house, Mom?” she asked.

“Oh, the gutters, there’s this problem with ’em, and they’re rotting, and they’re saying it’s gonna cause all this roof damage and it could be thousands and thousands if we don’t get it fixed now.”

Familiar
. Josie figured it had been about two years since she’d used that one. Back then it was the gutters were being ripped off the house by angry squirrels, and that she needed to have all of the leaves that had built up in there cleaned out, and that that was going to cost $600. Josie paused to see whether Marlene was recycling entire stories.

“Really, what’s wrong with the gutters?” she finally asked.

“Oh, it’s these damn squirrels!”

Closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead, Josie hated to be right. “How much will it cost to fix, Mom?” she said, haltingly, mentally running through her own savings, wondering how much she could manage without putting herself in jeopardy.

“Oh, it’s actually not too bad, there’s some guys in the neighborhood who say they can do it for four hundred.”

“Four hundred.”

“Well, maybe $300 if, you know, I flash ’em some tit and flirt with ’em a little bit.” Marlene’s throaty chuckle made Josie’s own throat tighten, choking her on a ball of disgust and resentment, anger and embarrassment. And sorrow.

“I can get a check for you for three hundred, Mom, it’s a little tight here.”

“Oh, it’s tight here, too, Josie. If you’ve got it tight then it must be a completely flat pancake here.” She cackled.

Their laughs, despite Marlene’s smoker’s rasp, were similar, and Josie hated that. She didn’t like to be reminded that she was anything like Marlene. Unless it was the Marlene from before the accident. Everyone noticed, though, as soon as they met Marlene. She had a moment of horrified dread at the thought “when they meet Marlene.” Suppose one of these days Alex met Marlene?

The dread was brief, though—the thought of Alex rushed over her like some sort of antidote. She imagined Alex’s mother, pictured her normal and nice, a professional, who didn’t walk around wearing clothes that were two sizes too small, six-inch “come fuck me” pumps, or eyeliner so thick you’d think that a road crew had applied it with a line painter.

“No problem, Mom,” she said, smiling. It was a sick grin, one that came from her out of a place of security of knowing that Marlene couldn’t see it. Her phone flashed, some number she didn’t recognize. “Hey, Mom, I gotta go, there’s somebody on my other line, it might be work.”

“Okay, hon, well, you take care and I’ll just look out for the check.”

“Yep, bye, Mom.”
Click
. She flashed over. “Hello?”

“Josie,” said a warm, deep voice.

Oh, how she needed this. It was as if he had read her mind and called to rescue her at the exact perfect moment. Gratitude flooded her, along with desire and need. “Alex,” she said, “how great to hear your voice.”

“That’s the kind of welcome I like.” The sound of him was filled with a smile, a happiness that infused her. “How are you doing?” he asked softly.

“I would be doing a lot better if I were with you,” she said, the words coming out effortlessly. No anxiety, no nervousness, just a drained sort of honesty that she found very appealing within herself.

“I would love to be with you, too,” he said quietly, a pensiveness to his words. “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked.

“A real walk, or a
walk
?” she said, adding affect to the second phrase. If he’d been in the room with her he’d have seen her put quotation marks around it.

A boisterous laugh filled her phone, forcing her to pull it away from her ear a few inches. “I don’t know…you tell me what I should say.”

“How about we start with a walk and then see if later on we could go for
a walk
.”

“I’d like that, Josie. I like you.”

If he had said “I love you,” she’d have run screaming in the other direction, but his simple “I like you” was better. Seconds ticked by; her brain paused as she just felt how good he was, how comfortable they could be together, and how this was a layer of life that she didn’t even know she had wanted. Finally, she said, “I like you, too.”

She could hear the smile in his words as he said, “Want to come over? We can have a glass of wine here and then go for a walk.”

“We will never get to the actual walk part, Alex, if I come over.”

“And that would be a problem because…?”

“Because you invited me for a walk!”

“Then I am uninviting you. There. You are not invited for a walk. Come over for a glass of wine instead. 34 Windsor. C’mon.”

“You really do live close to me!” By her calculations, his apartment was about two blocks away.

“I know. If I squint and get a pair of u-bend binoculars and angle seven mirrors with SETI-like precision, I still can’t see in your bedroom window.”

Silly. She needed silly right now. Silly drove Marlene’s acidity away. “Bummer,” she replied, yawning.

“You tired?” he asked. The sound of ice cracking filled the phone, then water pouring. “I have a bed you could sleep on.”

“If I am in your bed, sleep is the last thing we’d do.”

“Yes, it is. The last thing after plenty of others.”

Was this an invitation for sex and for an overnight? Could Dr. Perfect be calling in a booty call? Or had the relationship shifted, a casual approach to dating evolving into a more relaxed way of meeting up?

“On the count of three,” she said.

“Oh, God, I have to chase you again, don’t I?” he groaned. “Let me put on my shoes.”

“On the count of three,” she repeated, “let’s run and see where we meet.”

“You’re not wearing panties, are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I meant
only
panties.”

“No. Why?”

“Because the last time you sprinted away from me, that’s how you were dressed. Now—GO!”
Click
. He hadn’t waited for her count of three!

Completely unnerved, yet tremendously excited, she ran to the front door, grabbing her keys off a hook next to the door, sliding her feet into Crocs. Josie ran with about as much grace as a zombie in a 5K run. Only slower. Alex was practically at her doorstep by the time they met in the “middle.”

“Half a block? That’s the best you could do?” he asked, laughing. She wore a short camisole that was stretched taut against her middle. He patted it, palm flat against her ribs and belly, the gesture affectionate and thrilling. “You have a runner’s body,” he said, his face screwed up in a puzzled expression as she glared at him. “Don’t you run?”

“Only when the ice cream truck passes by.”

A big, slow grin spread across his face. One hand staying on her stomach, the other sliding around her waist, their torsos pulling together inch by inch as they stood on the sidewalk, a welcoming embrace slow enough to savor. On tiptoes, her heels popped out of her Crocs and her calves elongated, all so she could bury her face in his shoulder and inhale. He smelled like soap and spice, and as he pulled back to kiss her, tension from her call with Marlene melted out of her fast.

This was a kiss between boyfriend and girlfriend, an assumption of access that seemed so natural, as if they’d been dating for months and
of course
they would greet each other so effortlessly with an embrace and a kiss. Gentle caresses of her waist and back twinned with a not-so-tender kiss, tongues dancing, increasing in urgency and desire.

“Get a room,” an old man muttered, a rattling sound accompanying the jarring words. They pulled apart to find a homeless dude pushing a bent shopping cart, the metal frame overloaded with twenty or so overloaded bags filled with five-cent returnable cans. Sidestepping the cart, she and Alex wiped the kiss away, taking a deep breath as the guy passed.

“We should take his advice,” Alex said, looping her arm through his, leading her away from her apartment.

“Do you always listen to homeless men?”

“Only when they give me sex toy tips,” he deadpanned.

“Oh, dear,” was all she could respond with. “You make going back to your place
so
appealing.”

“I have wine. Netflix. A bed.”

“Sex toys?”

“Uh…well…there’s
me
.”

“Even better,” she answered, stopping to pull him in for another kiss. Smiling through the touch of their lips, she felt something soar inside, an energy that was all-pervasive.

“Why are you smiling?” he asked, running his hand through her hair, pushing it off her flushed face.

“Because I’m with you.” A lump in her throat competed with her speedy pulse. She didn’t say things like that to men. With Alex, though, it just spilled out.

“Then I hope to make you smile more.” A kiss. A squeeze. And then—

“Home, sweet home. Welcome to the castle,” he joked, gesturing at the front door of a building that was pretty close in age and architecture to hers. Same locked main door, same entryway with mailboxes, same hallway with apartment doors. Alex lived on the first floor, and as he unlocked his door and let her enter first, she burst out laughing.