My Very Best Friend (38 page)

So we went to get one of Olive’s beloved pigs. Olive drove, as she’d only had one shot. She tightened her stoned horse scarf and off we went. The pig’s name is Hallelujah. Rowena wrote out a total bill for child support and we poked a hole in the top of the note and threaded a rope through it, then put the rope around Hallelujah’s neck.

Lorna, drunk as a skunk and more fun now, straddled the pig to keep it in place and said, “I have caught a pig with a uterus. Here, piggy piggy, here, piggy piggy.”

Malvina helped with the tying of the note and said, “I am doing things I’ve never done before with Gobbling Group.”

Kenna said, “He looks tasty to me. Bacon! I am so hungry. Had to take out three badly infected appendixes today. Shredded my appetite at lunch.”

When we were back in the car, Gitanjali said, slightly inebriated, “I think I sing a song from India,” and she did. It went on for a long, melodious time, and we swayed to the notes.

Hallelujah is a quiet but small pig. If he was a person, he would definitely be a physicist.

We went to The Slut’s house, where Rowena’s husband lived.

What we did was immature.

Inappropriate.

Possibly a tiny bit of animal abuse, as Hallelujah was confused and not snug at home.

Kenna, for medicinal reasons only, rubbed Scottish Scotch on the pig. “Now he’s drunk,” she said.

Olive gave Hallelujah a shove in the butt, and Kenna shut the door, ever so quietly. Gitanjali sang, “Find your peace and love, piggy friend, sing a song and la la la, lo lo lo,” and I put my hand over her mouth. “Lo lo lo.”

Malvina said, “I hope we get arrested for this. I never do anything wrong and I’d like to be seen as a naughty woman.”

“Naughty, naughty,” I said. “Naughty!”

“I want to be seen as competently vengeful,” Rowena said.

Lorna said, “Men are motherfucking pigs.” She farted.

I laughed so hard when I heard the pig knock into something and squeal that I bent over double, Rowena leaning over me, laughing and cursing The Arse.

We ran away, lickety-split. I had to stop periodically because I thought I was going to wet my pants. I squirted a tiny squirt but kept running. My bladder is not strong. We sprinted past the lot where the Zimmerman Factory had burned down.

Next time I went to Gobbling and Gabbing Gardening Gangsters I would wear a diaper. I thought of myself in a diaper and laughed again.

The next day I called Ben Harris about the missing child support check. He got right on it, even though it’s not his job to do so. Rowena was paid that afternoon, and The Arse returned the Hallelujah pig, as ordered by the chief.

Toran and I worked on his farm during the week. He worked twelve to fourteen hours a day harvesting the apples, his muscles strong and tight, squeezable. On the weekends, for a few hours, we worked together in my garden. We both found it pleasing and relaxing.

We put in a wooden wishing well I’d found at a thrift shop. We planted perennials. I like to see plants and flowers come back, year after year. We also planted violets, bluebells, celandine, and poppies.

I had no idea that being covered in dirt could be so romantic, but with Toran it was.

I kissed him. Pretty soon we had to put our shovels down.

It’s best I live way out in the country.

Toran and I have torrid sex.

It’s the same heavy gymnastics panting sort of sex I write about in my books.

Sometimes he walks into my home and we can’t wait to get to the bedroom, so we use the floor. We indulge in the shower. We stroke and sigh outside at night under the stars, on top of a blanket. We try all the positions that I know about because I have a wild imagination and because I have bought a number of books on sex positions.

I bought the books on sex positions only because of my research for my writing, which goes without saying, as there was no one on my island to do sex positions with.

Our love making is passionate and lusty and I let myself go. If Dan The Vibrator was here I would toss him out and say, “I will not miss you, Dan. I have my own vibrator now. His name is Toran.”

Our foreplay can last a long and lush time or only fiery seconds.

But we laugh during sex, too, sometimes. We smile, we are gentle, we are sweet, and then that passion rocks through and Toran grabs my naked self and lifts me right onto his . . . ah . . .
Scottish sword.

The Scottish sword knows exactly what to do as it thrusts and parries and drives in again....

After my first book hit the best-seller list, I felt like I’d been run over.

It was overwhelmingly busy. My publishing house insisted I go on a book tour. I had to talk to people—some on TV, others in a radio station. I had to go to book fairs and conferences. I had to make speeches. I came off stiff, forced, like a dysfunctional robot. Even Maybelle said, “Loosen up, you’re scaring people.” I allowed that robotic, incessant workload to go on for three months.

I hated it. I am reserved and private. I am not socially adept. I know I’m awkward. Polite talk bores me. I don’t like shallow conversations, as they seem pointless. I don’t like being the center of attention. I don’t like people gushing over me. I am not comfortable with praise.

As a whole, I wish people well. As a group, I do not like being around them. I like to be alone.

The only group I’ve been comfortable around, ever, was Clan TorBridgePherLotte, fighters of the Crusading Giants, defenders against the marauding monsters of St. Ambrose.

After three months of the book crap, I was exhausted and shaky. I’d had a scare on a plane. It wobbled in the air, then sank, then landed quick, flight aborted. My flight paranoia bubbled over. I refused to do any more publicity, told my publishing house that they were making a ton of money off of me and that PR and marketing was their job.

I escaped to Whale Island. I bought my house, whale view, and five acres for cash; bought a ten-year-old pickup truck that rumbled and growled; saved the rest; and disappeared.

I watched the whales spouting off and the deer trying to get through my fence so they could eat my garden vegetables. I studied an old raccoon I named Chesterfield as he came out in the daylight, that crazy fool. I grew calendulas and marigolds, purple phacelias and delicate sweet peas, coral fountain amaranth and bachelor’s buttons.

I was entertained by squirrels and chipmunks, seals and red foxes, none of whom wanted me to give speeches or take hugs from strangers who loved my book.

I had an extensive playground built for my cats outside, two story and enclosed by wire so they wouldn’t get eaten by wild animals. There were catwalks, perches, and open areas. I watched them play while I wrote.

I told no one on the island I was Georgia Chandler.

They knew me as Charlotte Mackintosh. No one asked me many questions. The island is like that. We mind our own business.

Sometimes I loved it, sometimes I thought the loneliness was going to kill me down dead. I had McKenzie Rae Dean and my cats and garden, talks now and then with the obsessive-compulsive origami man, and Olga, my friend at the café/art gallery. And I cooked. I cooked all the meals and treats we ate in Scotland, many that my father made. It made me feel closer to him.

My best friend, though, was a woman I hadn’t seen in twenty years whom I wrote letters to and reached by phone now and then. That was pathetic and sad when I thought about it too much, but the truth was, I loved getting letters from Bridget and writing back to her.

And my life went on. Alone.

The woman stumbled in front of Toran’s house but caught herself before she fell flat on the driveway. She yanked herself up, stopped, walked two steps, and braced her hands on her knees.

I dropped my cutting scissors into the daisies I was dead heading and ran toward her.

“Are you all right? Can I help you?”

She didn’t answer, but ambled toward me, swaying like a reed in a pond, pushed this way and that. She was thin, too thin. She was wearing a black knit hat, odd in this warm weather; jeans; scuffed boots; and a plaid work shirt.

She had white-blond hair.

I caught Bridget when she pitched forward and fell straight into my arms. She said one word: Charlotte. She smiled before she passed out.

Toran and I held hands as we watched Bridget sleep in the hospital. It was hard to call it sleep. Bridget seemed half dead. The doctors had been in and out, as had the nurses. They had taken blood, performed their examinations, done their tests. Bridget had hardly moved. When she did periodically wake up, she would smile at Toran and me weakly, then pass out again.

Bridget had scars up and down her arms from drugs. There were no recent marks, though. She had a horrendous scar on her left shoulder that looked as if a crow had dug a claw in and pulled. She had another scar on her collarbone, like an S. She was pale and gaunt. Her fever was 104 degrees, her skin flaky with open sores.

She was horribly ill.

We waited for the test results, for the doctors, for the answers. Looking at her, I knew none of the answers were going to be good. This was not the flu. I braced myself, my hand gripped in Toran’s. I often wiped the tears off my cheeks, then wiped the tears off Toran’s.

My poor man. He was shattered.

Three doctors and three nurses entered Bridget’s hospital room ten days later in full hospital garb. Scrubs, hoods, masks, gloves, booties over their shoes. They were all worried, fidgety. Three stayed as far away from Bridget and the bed as they could.

“What is it?” Toran asked, standing up.

“What’s wrong?” I stood up, too. We had spent the night, again, leaning against the wall, leaning against each other.

One of the doctors indicated a table for us to sit at while another doctor opened the window.

“Mr. Ramsay. Ms. Mackintosh, I’m afraid I have bad news,” the doctor said through his mask. He was about sixty. Overweight, out of shape. Gray hair. Eyebrow cocked.

I held Toran’s hand.

“We were unclear of her diagnosis. We ran many tests, all negative, as you know, so we began reaching further afield.”

“Yes,” Toran said. “And?”

“Your sister,” the doctor said, with doom, “has acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is also known as AIDS.” He crossed the fingers of his gloved hands together and leaned back in his chair.

Toran and I squeezed each other’s hand at the same second, stricken.

“You may not have heard of it—” The doctor had a pompous tone.

“I’ve heard of it,” Toran and I snapped at the same time.

“By her symptoms I believe she’s had AIDS for some time. Years. It’s advanced, by my diagnosis. She is riddled with it, riddled.”

I slumped in my chair, hardly able to breathe. When I first learned about AIDS, having been married to Drew, a gay man, whose fidelity I became unsure of, I immediately went to get tested.

I was negative. In the ten-day wait for the test results, I studied the disease to its minutest cellular detail, my slight hypochondria swelling in my throat until it dang near choked me.

I knew it killed. I knew there wasn’t a cure. Now, in 1990, nothing had changed from nine years ago when it first burst onto the scene.

I turned to stare at my friend, Bridget, a friend I didn’t know but thought I did, a friend who did not tell the truth to shield me from her shame, a friend who had been crushed by an evil man, along with her health.

My eyes traveled up the tracks of her arms, one needle scar for every emotional torture.

I stifled a cry with my hand.

“AIDS,” the doctor said, with unhidden disapproval now, “is quite contagious. A plague-like disease. She will have to be quarantined. Usually it is only gay men practicing immoral behaviors and their promiscuity who have it, and drug users.” He steepled his gloved hands together, peering at us over the tips. “Your sister, being a drug addict . . . needles and so forth, sharing, becoming drugged together . . . that’s how she acquired it, probably, but it could have been from a man. Promiscuity is common with these types of people. . . .” He wrinkled his nose, a tiny scrunch,
disgusted.

An older nurse with gray hair said through her mask, “I hope she hasn’t contaminated us.” She was accusatory, angry, as if we had engineered this tragedy.

A young nurse spoke up. “As long as you don’t have sex with her or share drug needles you’ll be fine. You should know that already, Myrna.”

“We don’t need that type of commentary right now, so don’t make it,” Toran snapped. He was pale white, his shoulders slumped, his face aging almost as I watched.

The old nurse narrowed her eyes.

“We will keep her here in the hospital,” the doctor said. “Away from the other patients, far away, behind closed doors, so they don’t catch it. Could be plague-like, as I said. No one will touch her. We’ll shut off the ventilation to the rest of the hospital from this room. You must shower after seeing her and wear full hospital gear when you visit so you don’t catch it and spread it to others.”

“Catch it?” I said, my brain starting to move. “Do you know nothing about this disease? You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”