Something Fierce (16 page)

She reached out and took his hand. It was freezing. “I can’t tell you I don’t love you anymore because it would be a lie,” she said, and supposed it was true. She didn’t love him the way he loved her or the way she loved Seth, but there were some kind of feelings there. “You say you’ll wait for me.”

“I will.”

“Then wait for me,” she said. “Don’t follow me. Don’t pressure me. I’m a lot younger than you, Kyle. I freak out. I get scared. And then I do,” she glanced at the apartment building, “stupid things. You know this about me.” She put his cold hand against her warm cheek. “There’s a place for us. Someday. But now I need to figure things out. I have to learn to be alone…without messing up like I did last night. I’m worth the wait, Kyle, aren’t I?”

He nodded that she was. “Can I call you?”

She kissed his knuckle. “Yes. You can call me.”

She backed the car out of its parking space, powered up the window and pulled out of the lot. She was in control here, she reminded herself, and everything was going to be all right. Kyle would back off and it wouldn’t hurt her to talk to him once in a while. Before the chattering in her head had a chance to start up again, she plugged the iPod into the car’s stereo system and shuffled through the eighty-four albums settling on Fiona Apple’s
Extraordinary Machine
to recast last night and this morning. Fiona’s tough, pithy phrases and smoky voice held the mental prattle at bay but it didn’t wipe it out. Seth was going to find out about last night and when he did, she was going to lose him. The only good thing she’d ever had in her miserable fucking life was on his way out the door. She could see the disgusted look on his face. Hear him telling her off, calling her names. By the time she got home and pulled into the garage—the empty, empty garage—she felt lightheaded. Her heart was beating fast and loud—da TOOM, da TOOM, da TOOM—and then it stopped.

Stopped dead.

She couldn’t remember how to breathe. She was alone. In this terrible stillness. Dissolving into nonexistence. Disappearing.

She got out of the car and fell on the steps leading into the house. Her heart started beating again. Fast. Too fast. Da TOOM, da TOOM, da TOOM.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please,” she gasped, her eyes blurring with tears, “somebody please…” But there was no one. She pushed herself up the steps and into house, through the kitchen and living room and up the stairs to her bedroom. She dropped to her knees in front of her bed, reaching for the box underneath where the razor blade was hidden in a neatly folded envelope. She hadn’t cut since she’d been with Seth, but he wasn’t here and would soon be gone for good. She took the razor blade from the envelope with unsteady hands, laid her left leg across her right knee, pulled down her sock, angled the blade against that tender spot between the anklebone and the Achilles’ tendon where there were several faint scars. Then, pressing like she was using a pencil, she made an incision. With the sharp, burning pain and bubble of bright blood, there was relief and she sat there a moment, soaking her aching head in it, hot tears streaking her cheeks, aware of her beating heart and the air moving in and out of her lungs.

She sat there a minute more.

Then she took a tissue from the nightstand and dabbed the blood. Her heart was slowing down. In a good way. It was steadying, getting quiet and normal. She tore off a corner of the tissue and laid it over the little wound. She slipped the sock gently back in place. She turned on the television for some noise and sat on the bed. She leaned back against the headboard. She was going to be okay. She was going to be fine.

But if she wanted to stay that way, she had to get back in the driver’s seat. She hadn’t lost Seth yet and if she got her shit together, she wouldn’t have to. He was meeting Mother this evening and the Kerri he loved during the weekend escapes at Dr. Jarrell’s house was either going to merge or collide with the fucked up girl she was everywhere else. It couldn’t be left to chance. There were a lot of variables here. Like Kyle, for example. If he found out about Seth and was drunk enough, Kyle might confront Seth and tell him about her little adventure with “Greg” or about that weekend in New York. Both would be a direct violation of Seth’s “open and honest” policy, that
nonnegotiable
, that trap.

She didn’t want to think about this and turned up the television, but it couldn’t compete with the inward chatter so she went to the bathroom for a shower. She turned the water on full blast and made it as hot as she could stand it. Concentrating on scouring and scrubbing herself clean helped some. She needed a fresh start to this day, a redo. She went downstairs and had breakfast. She opened up a psychology book and tried to study for an upcoming test, but it was hard to focus. Maybe this was too soon for Seth to meet her mother. Rebecca was another variable. Always unpredictable. How could this
not
turn out to be a disaster?

She pressed her thumbnail into the little cut on her ankle and the pain shot through her, quieting all the noise. She took a breath and remembered the only useful lesson she’d learned from her years of therapy. The only truth that worked consistently and gave her something she could use. She had Dr. Donald Ostrom to thank. It was no pearl of wisdom he’d given her but one that he’d unwittingly set her on the trail to find. The journey she didn’t even know she was on at the time began during a routine therapy session. She’d caught the young doctor trying
not
to notice that her skirt had crept up when she’d changed positions on the couch.

He was a greasy-haired, unattractive fellow that hadn’t quite mastered the neutral veneer which was essential in getting people to spill their guts or unwittingly reveal themselves. She could see that he was probably more messed up than she was and not nearly as smart. Even without his preoccupation with her bare thighs, she knew he was attracted to her. She could always tell no matter how cool they played it. His desire for her was so strong that it had turned
her
on. She’d started addressing her sexual feelings and hidden desires over the next few meetings. Not in a brassy way, but as if she were sort of shy. Like him. Yet…a little nasty too. More and more nasty as time went on, week by week, like a very slow, mental foreplay. “Is it wrong to have those feelings?” Of course not. “Is it wrong to have those feelings for
you
?” she’d asked, looking into his shiny face, scarred and ruined by acne.

They’d only fucked one time and he was so sloppy and unappreciative about it that the moment he came, she’d looked into his eyes and said, “I’m seventeen years old; my mother sent me to you for help.” In books, she’d read how the color would drain out of a character’s face, but she’d never seen it in real life until that moment. Not another word was said as she stood up, smoothed down her skirt, leaving her underwear behind on purpose, and went out the door.

Though that was the last meeting with Dr. Ostrom, she continued seeing others for a while, amusing herself by studying a disorder and then exhibiting the signs in therapy. Watching them nod and take notes, it was all she could do not to laugh. She tired of that soon and realized how much there was to learn here about human nature. It became her secret project.

What she learned—the pearl of wisdom she’d found—was that everyone was fucked up. Everyone. The winners in this world knew that and played accordingly, using their variety of neurosis to get what they needed or wanted, be it money, power, drugs, fame, sex…love, whatever. No matter how smart, educated, worldly, or insightful a person was, they were messed up in one way or another and if they weren’t using it to their advantage, it was, by default, being used to their disadvantage. Only an idiot looked to be
cured
of who she was. Kerri was not an idiot though she did make an idiotic move from time to time, like running off with a self-loathing comedian which more or less brought that phase of her life to an end, but certainly proved her point: Rant was one of the most twisted people she’d ever met but his psychosis filled comedy clubs and lured away a girl that was smart enough to have known better.

Kerri had laid the subject of her “emotional problems” to rest with her mother shortly after she got away from Rant and moved back home. More therapy sessions were a prerequisite to getting her bedroom back and when Kerri was ready to be cured, she made sure that her mother went in with her. On that last session, they had a
breakthrough
. Before their hour was up, mother and daughter were embracing, crying wet spots into each other’s designer blouse, declaring their love for each other and promising to do better.

And they did! So much so that Rebecca agreed with Kerri that they didn’t need to go back, separately or together. It was a genuine miracle! Life hadn’t been perfect since then, but Kerri had had everything pretty much under control. There were still crack-ups and panic attacks on occasion, but nothing unmanageable, nothing she couldn’t handle.

For the most part.

Seth called later that afternoon. “You said yellow roses are your mom’s favorite, right?”

“I don’t think I can do this tonight, baby,” she said.

“Sure you can,” Seth said. “I’m nervous too.”

“She’s hated every guy I’ve brought home. If she’s in one of her moods, she can be brutal.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You don’t know my mother. You’re too nice. She’ll make fun of that. She’ll chew you up and spit you out.”

“I’m not afraid of your mother, Kerri. Yellow roses, right?”

“Yes,” Kerri said, “but that’s over-doing it. She’ll see right through it.”

“See through what?” he laughed. “I am meeting my girlfriend’s mother for the first time. I want to make a good impression; I want to show some respect. There’s nothing to see through. What you see is what it is.”

He told her to relax, that everything would be fine, and he’d be there in an hour and a half.

Seth, himself, was yet another variable, she realized. He was intuitive and strong-willed. Luckily, his childlike optimism edged out his intuitiveness. He didn’t believe—as she did—that there was always a secret, unspoken battle for control raging on in all relationships. Therefore, when he took that control, he did it unwittingly and so, she could usually steal it right back. He’d rolled right over her today, though. Laughing, fucking laughing, as he told her what was what.

She went to the bathroom and threw up.

It helped. It always did. It centered her somehow, unburdened her. She heard the garage door opening and knew it was her mother. Timmy had some kind of after-school thing going on. She wasn’t sure if his absence would help or hurt. Her mother was wiping down the counters when Kerri walked into the kitchen. “I’d think,” her mother said, not looking at her, “you’d at least want the place to look presentable. Is he late?”

“No,” Kerri said, checking her watch. This was going to be a disaster. She was sure of it. “He’ll be here in about an hour. When he said he would be.”

Rebecca looked at her. “Is there anything I need to know?”

“Like what?”

“Things that a normal person would mention but for shock effect or self-amusement, you purposely leave out. Is he obese? Is he handicapped? Is he a gang member or a towel-head?”

“You are something else, Mother, dear,” she said, trying to laugh, trying to relax.

“I just don’t like surprises, little girl.”

“He’s none of the above.”

“Okay. So what is he?”

“Just a guy. He’s cute. He’s a writer. He teaches at Northeast.”

“He wasn’t
your
teacher, was he?”

“God, no.”

“How did you meet him?”

“A book signing. I have a copy of his novel if you want to read it.”

“How old is he?”

This was it. The whole thing was going to blow up. They would be fighting when Seth arrived with flowers. It would be a mess. “Older than me,” she said, feeling trapped, interrogated.

“Obviously. How much older?”

She remembered Kat trying to guess his age when they were both students in his class. “He’s thirty,” she said.

Her mother considered this. “Where’s he taking you?”

“The Cleveland Orchestra.”

“Well, la-de-dah.”

It was part of their revised Proper Introduction Tour. They had tickets to Tchaikovsky’s
Romeo and Juliet
. “My first play was
Romeo and Juliet
,” Seth had told her, then added with a wink, “I saw it in high school with an English teacher that I had the hots for.” The plan was that he would pick her up at the house where he would
briefly
meet her mother before going out for the evening.

Kerri went to the bathroom to get ready. She shut the door and locked it. She was anxious; she had to pull it together. She took off all of her clothes and looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror that hung there. The bright lights were unkind and the beautiful woman she saw in the mirror at Seth’s place was gone. She felt like crying, but then was suddenly pragmatic, simply noting what she saw. Face, red and blotched. Tits, lopsided. Stomach, doughy and white. Crotch, covered in ugly, black stubble like a fungus. Legs, like sticks. Feet, as big and ungainly as a man’s. It was not much to work with, but it had been enough to get him and it would have to be enough to keep him.

Her long, thick hair was the only thing about her reflection she didn’t find repulsive; it camouflaged a lot. She got down to business, lathering and scraping away the unsightly stubble, leaving behind clean flushed skin, as fresh and tender as a baby’s. She luxuriated in the smell of the moisturizing creams as she rubbed them over her skin. Her silk underwear made her feel sexy. Toothpaste and mouthwash freshened her breath; makeup smoothed out her complexion, filled her lips, brightened her eyes. The sleek, black dress hugged her curves and reworked her figure. The heels gave her legs shape and made her feet appear feminine and slender.

When the job was complete, she had to admit that she looked pretty damned good: the attractive sister of the dreadful creature who stood naked under the harsh lights a short while ago.