— She showed me she was ready to die so that I could have a normal life, Annabel tears up, as the camera moves toward her in close-up, — but there ain’t no such thing as a normal life for me without her in it.
— I guess we had to remember that we are different, Amy says. — That it can’t be just about one of us and somebody else.
— It has to be about the two of us, Annabel says, a serene glow in her eyes. — I need her and she needs me. It ain’t easy, and life is a big mystery, but one thing’s for sure, it’s gonna take us both to work it out together.
I look back at Lena. — I really do need to stay here a while, don’t I? I ask her.
— Yes, I think you do, she says.
Part Three
Transfers
Twenty-two months later
50
A DREAM TO SHARE (WITH THOSE WHO REALLY CARE)
THANKSGIVING YESTERDAY WAS so stiflingly hot—even after the sun had gone down—that a cooling downpour would have been greeted with hallelujahs, despite our atheist–agnostic household. Even through the air conditioning, you could feel the dense gravity pulling your bones into the couch. The sky had threateningly rumbled and drummed, without delivering on its loud promise, but, finally, the heavens opened in the night. The lightning flashes, X-raying the bedroom, and the thunderous sound of the air crumpling didn’t bother me, at least not directly, but I could feel Lucy writhing in the clammy sheets, almost in time with nature’s brutal music.
Time to get up and steal a few hours before Mom and Dad rise. Dammit, why do old people never sleep?! When I think of them it’s always with such intense guilt: how can you love somebody on a deep level with every fiber of your being, yet be so desperate not to become them?
Thankfully, Lucy is now soundly in dreamland, her stiff mouth half open, nostrils flaring with every breath. As I rise, she turns into the space I’ve vacated in the bed with a slightly truculent murmur. I put on my sports bra, silky sleeveless shirt, shorts, sneakers, and tie my hair back, threading my ponytail through a Twins baseball cap.
Slipping outside, I’m pounding the dawn pavements, heading south by the bay, enjoying the cool breeze on my arms and shoulders before that oppressive sun comes up. The air has the scent of wet pavement, as vines of mist weave up from the sidewalk.
It’s nice having my parents down, but they’re totally lost here in Miami. I practically had to buy them both a new wardrobe when they arrived. I don’t think my dad has ever owned a pair of shorts in his life. Mom looks a lot better having shed that darned weight, though there’s still plenty of work to do. It’s not always easy being around them, although we have a better relationship than ever, and it’s all thanks to Lucy and her emails! The irony!
That’s what all that weird business a couple of years back has taught me: don’t avoid a problem, meet it head-on. But while Mom and Dad can be very demanding time-wise, I’m delighted that Thanksgiving at Tom and Mona’s passed without incident, especially after last year’s trauma. With the added factor of my own parents being present, I’d been concerned, but it was Lucy who told me to chill, said I was trying too hard. I swear, we become more like each other every day!
God, how I love to run. There are practically no cars on the road, so I’m finding a nice rhythm in both pace and breathing, as I skip over another set of lights. When you get into this sort of stride, you feel the tension leaving your body, which is so invaluable at this time of year, Thanksgiving being so complicated. After last year’s debacle (Mona and Lucy fought), I felt like suggesting to Lucy that we should just blow it out and head over to the Bahamas, leaving Nelson with Tom and Mona for a few days. She’d never have agreed, though: that kid was such a game-changer. I have to tread warily on that issue, but it’s true, as his birth mother Lucy is much more protective of him. I’m like the fun dad. Also, she’s been on a big downer since Marge Falconetti’s funeral last month. That poor woman ate herself to death after she stopped going to the gym. As Marge was her client, Lucy’s taken it really hard.
The finest darned thing about having a kid, though, is that you’re so busy cleaning up after them, you don’t have time to dwell on all the other bullshit life throws your way!
The sun is coming up over the bay and I can see the Wynwood art and design district across the bridge. It was big fun over there a few weeks ago, Lucy and I partying (the first time for her since Nelson came along) at a function after my exhibition at the new Miami branch of the GoToIt gallery. My exhibition was a huge hit in New York, and now it’s pulling in the crowds down here. I really do owe Jerry tons.
I turn back up West Street toward home, cutting over Alton, getting into the 30s, skipping past the scalped saw-grass verges, already turning a darker green after last night’s rain.
Bliss, the house is still quiet! I mix a banana-and-peanut-butter protein shake and think of Lucy, the morning’s ruminations crystalizing into a nagging desire to speak with her.
I hear her laughing from another part of the house, and find her still in our room, sitting in the lotus position on the bed, watching that new weight-loss show, the hybrid of The Bachelor and The Biggest Loser. It’s called There’s a Date in There Somewhere. Simon Andrews, a wealthy young Connecticut stockbroker, has worked with their training and fitness expert Michelle Parish, to take, as the host says, “four morbidly obese women and turn them into the highly datable, and extremely marriable lovelies you see before you today.”
Simon arches a brow, and looks painfully sincere as he faces the four girls. “I should have been flattered, Patti, when you said that my love would stop you gaining back the weight. But that comment set off alarm bells. I’m sorry, Patti, but you do it for you. You’re missing the point of the program. It says to me that, despite the slim, hot body, you are still a fat girl inside. I’m going to have to let you go.”
As Patti breaks down in tears, Lucy pulls on a Bruins ice hockey shirt. — Check this shit! That Michelle Parish is such a bitch!
I kiss her and she playfully grabs my ass, without diverting her attention from the screen. I head to the office to check my emails. There are quite a few but one grabs my attention: the bill of sale has gone through on The New Man sculpture. A surge of elation hits me as I realize that we’re rich again! Stinking fucking rich! I open the attachment, print off a copy of the contract, sign it, scan it, and email it right back to the agents. It’s done!
Euphoria is quickly displaced by a pang of loss. The New Man is my best and most personal work and he’s leaving me. I suddenly have the urge to spend as much time with him as possible, before he’s shipped off to his new resting place. So I go outside to the studio.
I find him as I always do, crouching down, looking up, almost doglike in his posture. I walk around him, studying, from different angles, his frozen, stupefied expression, like he’s trying to figure it all out. Yes, by far my finest creation. I draw the blinds, shutting out the stream of light, and put on the video presentation of the Everglades, creating that swampy environment around him. That was Lucy’s idea, and it really works. The speakers rumble with the squawks of birds and the wind brushing through the mangrove bushes. I sit there in the blacked-out darkness, suddenly full of fear for my invention, wanting to put the lights back on, or open the blinds. The New Man suddenly looks angry, resentful, like he might pounce on me and tear me to pieces. I rise and yank the dark drapes apart, blinking as the cascading light floods through the workshop and bathes my exhibit, lulling him back to serenity.
51
THANKSGIVING
LENA’S BEEN FOR a run and I’m watching repeats of crap on TV. Now she’s off again, presumably to steal some working time at the studio. She never stops. I can remember when I had that kind of juice.
My weight’s gone down again, though it’s hard to get motivated. I’m 147, which is far from ideal, but better than the 200 she made me go up to in order to learn my lesson. Well, it was more like 199.5 and I drank a lot of fluid for the weigh-in on the scale that day, but we didn’t split
hairs. Lena had begged me to stop and had actually unchained me a few days earlier (some people are just not cut out for hostage-taking), but I insisted on staying to the end.
I get off the bed, and pick up my laptop. I turn it on and look back at my blog, reliving the craziness and the pain.
Ate the last of the candies, then instantly craved a burger and fries to obliterate the sickly sweetness. But once I had that, I knew I would want more candy. So I glugged back the last bottle of Bud, lining them up like soldiers, feeling its lush kick augment the dim, fuddled charge the others had built up. I thrashed at my chain. “IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?! MOTHERFUCKERS! COME TO ME, COME ON TO ME AND I’LL TEAR YOUR FUCKING SLIMY EYES OUTTA YOUR PUSSY HEADS!”
Then Lena comes in with more chips, cookies, and beer. “We don’t need to do this.”
“Don’t unchain me, or I’ll rip your fucking throat out! Bring me more fucking fries!”
“I can’t . . .”
“Show some fucking balls, Lena! I kept you here for six fucking weeks! FOOD PLEASE!”
“Tell me, Lucy. Just tell me!”
“I can’t. Now be a fucking woman and feed me.”
But all that shit she gave me, it really was addictive. I never realized how much before: it took the best part of a year to get clean. I secretly binged for over six months, unable to pass a fast-food joint or avoid sneaking a candy bar. It wasn’t easy, and now I can see how hard I was on her, and some of my other clients. I guess I bullied them, and trying to drive the weakness out their systems was a twisted way of trying to drive the doubt from my own.
I don’t like looking at the last entry. At what we call the conversation, the one I could have had with Lena to avoid all this weight gain, junk food, captive shit, but which I couldn’t indulge in until I’d popped the target on that scale. It was my perverse kind of penance.
But I scroll ahead to it: the final blog in the journal, the conversation.
I’m already craving starch and stodge; it had been more than an hour since I’d devoured the two large orders of fries Lena brought back from a Burger King drive-through. I washed them down with a sugary chocolate milkshake. It made me want more fries. Salt, sugar, fat, carbs. There really was no end to this.
I sent her back out twenty minutes ago. Where the fuck is she?
The welcome distant snap of the elevator door, and Lena comes with my shit. It isn’t food. I can barely look at the swell of my gut over the waistband of my pants. She’s sitting with a carton of salad and couscous as the Big Mac sweats on my lap like a carcinogenic turd in a bun, looking up at me. I’m on the cusp of 200 lbs. It suddenly dawns on me that I can’t eat this. And I realize it’s time. “I’m ready to have the conversation,” I tell her.
Lena sits down beside me, and then tries to pull me to her, but I’m rigid as I hear a hollow voice coming from deep inside me, so she backs away, giving me space. “It was a Sunday back in Weymouth, and I had been at my friend Lizzie’s house, listening to some music and hanging out. I was walking home up North Street. As I was getting under the bridge, I became aware of some boys walking behind me, whispering, occasionally laughing. The way their voices dropped in conspiracy, I knew they were planning something. But I didn’t look back. I quickened my step, and carried on up the street.”
“Oh, Lucy . . .” Lena soothes, squeezing my shoulder.
“At that point I made a big mistake. Turned right and cut through Abigail Adams Green, a small space full of trees and shrubs, which was a shortcut to my house in Altura Road. A second group of them were waiting there for me. Clint Austin, the leader, approached and glowered at me. He said he wanted that kiss he’d asked me for earlier in class. His friends surrounded me. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say?”
A tighter squeeze from Lena.
“Then suddenly I was on my back; somebody crouched behind me and a solid push from Austin sent me tumbling onto the grass. Before I knew it, two boys were pulling me by my arms, dragging me along the ground, into the shrubs. There was a hand clamped over my mouth as my skirt was pulled up, my panties yanked down, and Austin, measle-faced, green eyes circled black, was violently spitting on me then forcing himself into me, in a horrible, sharp, tearing motion. I bled for days afterward. I turned my head to the side and felt little, other than a numbness. I heard cheering, yes yes yes, then I opened my eyes and saw Austin looking at me in rage and fear, as if he’d been trapped, coerced into this too. Then the cruel smile reappeared and he started saying things I couldn’t quite understand. But he hated girls. I knew and understood that he hated girls.”
“Oh my God, Lucy . . . that’s so horrible . . .”
“I wasn’t going to cry or plead. I was a Brennan. I sneered back at him, and I saw his fear reappear. Then another voice cannoning across the park, dispersing the kids like a starter pistol at the track. Dad’s face towering above me, Clint Austin off me, terrified, running away. Austin’s anger now supplanted by the deeper rage of him, my fucking father.”
“Didn’t you ever try to talk to Tom? Why didn’t he realize?”
“Cause I fucking faked it!” I scream in her stiff face, squeezing her hand by way of apology, as she recoils. “I couldn’t come up short again. I had to dig in, to suck it up, I couldn’t be the victim. I’d rather be the slut than the victim. So we walked as I waited for his blow, the one that never came. But I was fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.”
“No, Lucy,” Lena says, “not you. Never you.”
“When I got home I showered and washed and scrubbed myself. I said nothing. I had to face him in class the next day. At first he had a scared, sheepish expression, and avoided me, perhaps fearing retribution from my father. When he realized that wouldn’t be forthcoming, the arrogance returned. I was routinely called a slut, a whore, a nympho, by the members of his gang, who put it around that I had consented to sex with a multitude of the boys.”
“That’s awful . . .”
“I got no fucking respite at home. I had a lecture from Mom. When Dad looked at me, all I could see was the bitter disappointment in his eyes.”
“A few months later the same gang, led by Austin, attacked and raped another girl, Crystal Summersby. This was in Beals Park, not far from the same spot. They ambushed her and her friend on their way home from the Coffee Express in Bridge Street and dragged them off the path that went through the green, into the trees. They threatened her terrified friend with the same if she said anything. At the trial, Crystal said she could see the white spire of the church she went to with her family. And they did this, because I said nothing. Me, the Julia Tuttle Causeway hero, stood by, fucking mute, ensuring this vile prick was free to do what he did to the other girls. I was a fucking fake!”
“No, you were just a scared kid!”
“The real hero was Crystal Summersby, and her friend, who came forward and had the sick bastard sent to juvie.”
“You were a child, Lucy! You should have had someone there for you!”
“There was nobody.” I feel Lena’s hand moving slowly up and down my back. “So I learned to fend for myself. I immersed myself in the tae kwon do, karate, and kickboxing, planning a reception for this asshole on his release, but his family had moved away and I never heard of him again.”
“But . . . but . . .”
“I didn’t come forward because I could never be cast as a victim. But that’s what I was. But I resolved: never, ever again. You have to stand up. You have to come forward.”
“Yes. You taught me that. You.” She points at me. “Lucy Brennan.”
My hand grips her smaller one and she presses back. “I now need to tell Dad this real story. You’re the only person I’ve properly explained it to. When I . . . you know, with Jerry . . .” I lower my voice and instinctively look around the empty apartment, and Lena does too, “. . . that was me done. It was like exorcising a ghost. I was ready to be wrapped in chains, to let anybody do what they wanted. I was ready to voluntarily surrender . . .” and I squeeze her in a hug, dr
inking in her beautiful, reassuring scent, “. . . and I’m just so glad it’s been to you and not the police . . .”
I look into Lena’s jade-green eyes, feel her cool lips on mine. I can’t resist as I feel her slipping off my cuffs.
It’s done.
We kiss for a bit, and a mountain of passion starts to bubble in me. My fingers are pushing aside cloth and working Lena, showing her where the fuck I’m coming from. As she starts to get aroused, I stick my other fist into my own pants, knuckles grinding my clit like a fighter trying to open up an opponent’s scar. I come straightaway as Lena gasps, but I keep working my wrists at maximum force against my pubic bone and hers. I only briefly see Lena’s eyes roll heavenward as she growls like a savage and kicks her legs out like a swimmer, before I feel my own eyeballs curving toward the sky. “Fuck . . .”
I spread my legs to better enjoy the delicious throb, a sensation so gorgeous that I feel my teeth nipping my bottom lip in appreciation. “Fuck . . . fuck . . . fuck . . .”
“Fuck . . .” Lena gasps, as I unravel my limbs, pushing my damp hair from my face. “That was so gooooood . . .”
“I know, right?”
God, I get myself so goddamn horny reading that last part. But I had to reward myself after that confession, by reliving that post-conversation moment in the blog. The crux of it all, though, was that I was finally the most free I had ever been, and I had Lena. Then all I had to do was lose the blubber. And I did. Then came the pregnancy, and back on it went, though I’m getting it off again.
Once Lena and I decided we wanted a kid, there was never any doubt as to who would be inseminated and carry it for the term. Lena’s art career was taking off again, with a massive renewal of interest in her sculpture, especially The New Man, and, of course, the photography exhibition, so she really had to work. — It took me so long to get to this point, she’d argued, — whereas you’re an expert, you’ll be able to get back in shape in no time.