Roxy Harte (35 page)
Authors: Sacred Revelations
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
the darkness of the room, an illusion. I know the olive tan tone of his skin tone as well as I know the pale, pale whiteness of my own. “How can I not go to my own father’s funeral?”
“You’re going,” Garrett says from the bed. We both turn to look at him. Standing, he crosses naked to the middle of the room where he pauses, rumpled from too little sleep and swaying slightly from being only half-awake. He is unselfconscious of his slack penis swinging between his legs or the fact that we are watching as he scratches the curve beneath his left ass cheek. “He was your father.”
I look from Garrett to Thomas, seeking any other answer and, finding none, I run into the bathroom.
Slamming the door to my newfound refuge, the bright white tile walls blinding, I turn off the lights and sit on the lidded toilet in the dark. Their voices come through the door. They are not talking to me, but to each other, in soft voices. I hear Garrett’s curse through the door and try to not care what he thinks, but I do.
I always care what others think.
I want to please although I fail miserably at it more often than not.
Even in the dark, the cold, hard porcelain presses in on me, confining me. It is not a good confining, like the isolation sphere. It is a horrifying confining, I imagine, quite like a grave. Dark. Dirt. Cold.
I can’t stay in this bathroom.
I can’t face Garrett and Thomas.
Dark, dirt, cold…I press my hand against the tile, cold and damp. My hand sinks into the tile and I am suddenly being swallowed by the hard porcelain, but it is soft like dirt, swallowing me. I have to get out of here!
* * * *
Dawn is a mere lightening of the sky. Dreary gloom seems to be the theme of the new day.
If I were thinking, I would have stayed in the warm hotel, not crawled through the small bathroom window to escape the cold, tile walls. If I were thinking, I would never have gotten on that plane. But I didn’t think, I did get on the plane, and now, I am here, inKentucky , the landscape of all my nightmares.
The sting of ice is good. It reminds me I’m not dead yet.
That’s what pain does for me…reminds me that I’m still alive.
I lift my face into the sting and still tears don’t come, my eyes water from the cold, from the breeze, but I shed no tears for my father.
“I hate him,” I scream into the early morning air.
On hands and knees, lips to the frozen granite of my mother’s grave marker, I whisper, “I hate him, I
Page 160
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
hate him, I hate him!”
I know for a fact I am losing my mind when I hear my mother’s voice calling my name, “Sophia?
Sophia?”
The arms lifting me are solid though, and rough, not a mother’s embrace, the voice deep, panicked, demanding, “What were you thinking, Sophia? Do you want us to bury you as well?”
“The serious thing for each person to recognize vividly and poignantly, each for himself, is that every falling-away from species virtue, every crime against one's own nature, every evil act, every one without exception records itself in our unconscious, and makes us despise ourselves.”
-Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being
Garrett
Steam rolls from under the bathroom door, the scent of Thomas clinging to it. I cringe that it is his scent that brings her comfort. It makes me tired and angry and I wish to God I’d never agreed to let her find her darkness with him. I could have given her what she needed. I just needed time. I need time now, time alone with her, time to talk to her. As much as I want to please her, as much as I still lust after Thomas myself, I don’t see a ménage à trois working between the three of us. Will I always feel like the odd man out?
“Shit.” I start toward the bathroom, but a solid pounding at the door brings me back around to see Thomas going toward the door. I stay between the two rooms, waiting to see who it is, never expecting the open door to reveal George and Jackie.
“Honey child? Where are you?” she shrills from the sidewalk, coming through the door at full speed.
“Kitten?”
The bathroom door crashes open and Kitten flies from the room, jumping into Jackie’s arms, wrapping both arms and legs around her middle. “You came! Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Kitten is both naked and dripping wet.
“Christ.” Thomas sighs.
“Is he here too?” Jackie quips. Aiming a finger at Thomas, she gives him the look that says
I’ll deal with
you later
. She then turns to me and gives me the same look before saying, “Jesus must be hiding in this room somewhere because I know I said I’d see the second coming before I ever stepped foot in Ohio again.”
“We’re inKentucky ,” George says, dropping their carry-on luggage in the middle of our room.
“Same difference,” Jackie and I say at the same time. George and Thomas share a look that says clearly that they don’t understand. Jackie and I share a look that says all too well that we do.
“How did you find us?” Thomas demands.
Page 161
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
“Don’t want us here? Well too bad.” Jackie narrows her eyes and I shrug, pulling on clothes, determined not to say another word as Jackie sits on the edge of the bed, Kitten, still wrapped around her, sits on her lap. “Baby girl called, and Mama Jackie is here.”
“Kitten called you?” I say and Thomas asks at the same moment.
She gives us both a challenging look before pulling an edge of the blanket up around Kitten, who is now shaking in her arms. “Men just don’t understand. Times like these, crying times, a woman needs the heart of another woman to share the pain with.” She pats Kitten and rocks her. “Yes, that’s what we’re gonna do, child.”
Thomas kneels beside them both, a towel in hand, and I think for a moment that I should have been the one to bring Kitten a towel. Kitten doesn’t move, like a child separated for a long moment from her mother, she clings to Jackie, letting Thomas towel dry her hair, and I just stand here like an idiot watching.
“Baby girl, baby girl. You poor, sweet thing. Tell me what’s been done to plan this funeral.”
“I don’t know. Lion is taking care of everything,” Kitten whispers.
“Then I need to talk to him. Because certain things must be done,” Jackie insists and, whipping open her phone, she presses a button.
“You have Lionell McCain on speed dial?” I demand.
“He’s an important person in Kitten’s life and Kitten is an important person in my life, of course he’s on speed dial.”
“He is not an important person in Kitten’s life!” I scream, illogical emotion tearing through my guts. I’m pissed as hell that her father died and she ran to him instead of me. Watching Thomas pull one of his overly large turtlenecks over her head, I feel like a failure all the way around and punch a wall because it will help me forget that it’s not really Lion I’m mad at in this moment. “I am her Master, damn it, and he is a non-existent ass.”
“Thomas?” Jackie lifts her brow and nods toward me.
“Oh, no, I know that look, that’s the
deal with him
look. I do not need to be dealt with!”
“Then stop being a drama queen and start being helpful!” Jackie demands.
* * * *
“God, I’m such an ass!” I bury my face in my hands and, in delayed reaction, scan the closest tables to make sure no small children heard my outburst. Lunchtime at the only fast-food place in town has made
Page 162
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
this McDonald’s a busy place, but there are no small children in hearing range.
“Yes, you are, but tell me how you came to that conclusion?” George asks.
“I should be the one at the hotel holding Kitten’s hand and comforting her, helping her make arrangements, seeing to her needs.”
“Yes. So, why aren’t you?” George lifts his cola mid-question and sips as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Nice, Doctor, very nonchalant.
I look at Thomas, feeling more animosity than I should. “He seems to do a better job of taking care of her than I do.”
George looks between us. “Yet, you are both here, she is there, with Jackie and Lion comforting her.”
“Thank God for Jackie.” I close my eyes, grateful, in truth, that she set aside all her issues and came. It has always been that way with her. If I needed her, she was there, no matter how mad at me she was the moment before, and now she has taken in Kitten the same way, like family should be. Toying with a French fry, I complain, “I didn’t want her to call
him
.”
“His presence was necessary, he has all the answers. I’m pretty certain that most of the funeral is already arranged because he stepped in…and like it or not…” Thomas says softly. “…he was a man who made a very significant impact on who the woman is today, you can fault him all you like for what transpired in the past, but without him, Kitten wouldn’t be in our lives today.”
“So what? I should thank him for fucking with her mind?”
“Maybe.” Thomas locks gazes with me. “Lion isn’t the reason we’re sitting in a McDonald’s at twelve-thirty in the afternoon.”
“It isn’t?” I hide my question behind a bite of cold burger.
“You’ve changed your mind.”
I swallow, the burger sticking halfway down. I take a drink to force the meat down and push the boxed sandwich away.
“Can you two catch me up? I’m a little behind on current events,” George asks.
I look through the window at falling snow. Avoidance…it’s what I’m good at.
“Celia wants us to share her. We haven’t had a chance to talk about to what extent yet, fifty-fifty, seventy-thirty…but shared. And Garrett thought it would be a better plan if we all shared each other, a ménage à trois.”
“Is this true, Garrett?”
I ignore him, pretending to watch a red Ford spin on slush, stuck for the moment in the drive thru lane. I really haven’t missed this. I haven’t missed anything that this part of the world offers.
“Garrett?” George touches my arm, drawing me back to the conversation. I look from George to
Page 163
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Thomas, throat dry, words stuck in my mind. Was it my suggestion?
I sigh, trying to buy time, not knowing what I want, what I really want. “I may have suggested it, I may be having second thoughts, it may just be that we’re in this godforsaken part of the world and, as a result, I’m not thinking clearly about anything. What I do know is I’ve been a jerk to Kitten ever since I got off the plane and I’m going to start making up for that. I need to be here for Kitten and the last thing any of us need to be worrying about is what’s going to happen once we get back toSan Francisco .”
“In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.”
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Kitten
I face my father for the first time in seven years. He lies dead in a sky blue, satin-lined coffin and doesn't even look like the man I remembered. This man, made up with the heavy pan-caked artistry only the best funeral home in the area's cosmetician could muster, is old. Liver spots dot his face and hands. His cheeks, arms and waistline have gone soft with pudgy rolls of fat. His hair is snow white. Such a different man…it’s hard to believe so much change in so little time. The whisperings of two of my aunts on my father’s side vaguely filter through my brain gone numb with shock and pain.
“The funeral home did a good job, Anne. He looks good.”
“The makeup's too heavy around his eyes.”
“No, he looks fine,” Aunt Judy assures her. “But where are his glasses?”
Glasses
? I watch as bifocals in a heavy, black plastic frame are produced and propped on his nose. A sob breaks from Aunt Anne’s throat and I watch as Aunt Judy wraps her arm around her, saying, “That's much better. He looks more like himself now.”
I look at the man again. A man I never saw out of a suit and tie the entire time I lived at home. Now, he wears a green and white plaid cotton shirt, layered under a forest green cardigan sweater, and although a bible rests beneath his hands, he couldn't look less like himself.
“Comfortable,” Aunt Judy insists. “He looks comfortable.”
Garrett walks up behind me, wrapping his arms around me, placing a kiss on top of my head. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I avoid the judgmental glances of my aunts. Although Garrett was the man introduced as my official boyfriend, Thomas has been my constant shadow. Even now, he stands hidden between sprays of fresh-cut flowers, leaning against a wall. All but I have forgotten that he is there. I am glad he is near and my aunts can think whatever they want to think. I catch his gaze and, with my look, draw him to me until he is standing beside me, holding one of my hands, Garrett still plastered to my back.
