“A little of both. We’re okay.”
“Good.”
I cupped a furtive yet dramatic hand to the side of my mouth. “Pike and Delta are listening. The girls are right down there in that room. Sssh. The ears have walls. I mean, the walls have ears.”
He smiled. “You’re the one talking, not me. Here’s an irony for you. You’re drunk, and I’m sober.”
“What are you like when you’re drunk?”
“Quiet, too quiet.”
“Not me.” I wobbled to a stop outside my bedroom door. “I’m Chatty Cathy. Remember those dolls? The ones with the string in their backs? Daddy bought me all of them. New ones, old ones. Did you know Maureen McCormick was the voice of the 1970’s dolls? That’s right, Marcia Brady. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. I had blonde Chatty Cathys, brunette, redheads. I even had the black one. Daddy and I picked it out as a Christmas gift for our housekeeper’s daughter—yes, we had a black housekeeper and her name was ‘LaRynda’ but I called her ‘Mrs. Washington’ because Daddy said it was respectful but you know, he made her wait for the bus outside in the rain and snow, see, there was a special bus route through the neighborhoods of Buckhead—that’s where we lived, near the governor’s mansion—where the black maids worked, oh, yes, it was all so old-school and lily-white, anyway, I picked out the black Chatty Cathy for LaRynda’s daughter, who was my age, but when I gave it to her she said, ‘I want a white one, like you have,’ and I said ‘How come?’ And she said—her name was ‘Sharon’—Sharon said, ‘Because black girls are ugly,’ and I said, ‘How come you think so?’ And Sharon said, ‘Because everybody says so, nobody even sees us when they look at us, but everybody says you’re pretty and everybody sees you.’
“So anyhow, I traded with her and I got the black Chatty Cathy and she got one of my blonde ones. But you know, that’s sad and I’m so glad things have changed. But even now, do you think black women get enough respect for their beauty? I don’t.” I took a breath as I looked up at him solemnly.
“Where’s that string?” Thomas said drily, turning me so he could look at my back. “I’d like to tie a knot in it.”
“Nobody’s pulling my strings anymore. No strings attached. I’m nobody’s puppet.”
“I think you’ve almost exhausted your string analogies for tonight.”
“I’m babbling. I know it.” I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, then backed toward my open door, hugging myself. “I discharged my Hummer’s battery, ran out of gas, made you jump in the pond, threw up at the café, now I’m high and I can’t stop talking. I’m so nervous. You make me incredibly nervous. You’re not like any other man.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Even worse, I have nightmares and I’m afraid to go back to sleep. Will you sit with me a little while? This is not a comeon.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Good. Come and sit.”
I wandered into the bedroom with him behind me. He turned on a lamp and left the door open. That charmed and depressed me. He was a gentleman or disinterested or both.
You don’t want a man, you want a memory. A boyfriend said that to me when I broke up with him for no apparent reason. He was right. I could have any man I wanted, so there was very little challenge about it. I got bored easily. Now, unfortunately, I wanted a lot of memories with just this one man, Thomas Karol Mitternich, but I was trapped in fears and scars—both his and mine. “There’s a chair,” I said, as if he couldn’t see it. “Take it to my side of the bed, please.” Then I climbed under the covers. As he pulled the chair around I worked my quilt and sheet like a bird works a nest. Put your face right side down, puff the pillow a little, right arm casually curled up, right hand tucked under the pillow. Yes! Your scars are hidden. I laid down on my right side with the scarred side of my face burrowed just-so into the pillow. Now I looked like the old me. As long as I didn’t move.
Thomas sat down slowly in the chair, watching me with a quizzical frown. “What are you doing? Getting ready to lay an egg?”
“Posing. That’s what my whole life has been about. Tilt this way, glance that way, suck in my stomach, catch the light just so. I have to learn new poses, now. If I work at it, I can angle the bad side of my face away from people most of the time.”
“There’s no bad side. There’s just your face. Don’t do that. You’ll get a crick in your neck.”
“Better a crick than to be stared at in the wrong way.” I shifted a few more times. Finally, mired in the bed like a damaged Greek statue half-buried in the ashes of Pompeii, I could relax. The illusion was in place. “I was raised to be a geisha,” I explained. “To be ornamental. Like a prize piece of livestock. Don’t tell me it isn’t better to see me this way. ‘A work of art.’ That’s what people used to call me. When I was a girl artists were always asking my father if he’d let me pose for them. He was so proud. And he’d tell me, ‘A thousand years from now, collectors and historians will admire paintings of you. Your beauty will make you immortal.’”
Thomas scowled. He pushed the chair aside and sat down on the floor close to my head. The antique bedstead was so low he could gaze right at me. He propped his arm on the bed and steepled his head on his fist. Cocooned in the intimate light of a single lamp, we were separated by so little space I could feel his breath on my cheek.
“You’re still beautiful,” he said, his voice low and husky. “Of course you are. It’s amazing to look at you. But it has nothing to do with whether you qualify to be the new Mona Lisa.”
“I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I just . . . I know what I’m good at. I want to show you.”
“You don’t have to bury half your face in a pillow to impress me.”
Tears welled up. I blinked them away. “There’s a branch of Daddy’s family that still owns a plantation on the coast of South Carolina. They have an old slave cabin there; they use it as a guest house. They call it ‘the servant quarters.’ Servant, not slave. Sounds so much kinder, doesn’t it? Happiness is all in how you see your place in society, in my opinion. I’m a geisha. Or at least, I was. And I was happy to be one. I just want you to know that.”
“If it makes you happy to peek at me from a strategically doodled hollow in a fluffed-up pillow, so be it.” He paused. “But you look like your head’s being swallowed by a big marshmallow.”
I chortled. Amazing. He could make me laugh. “I’m just drunk enough to cry and laugh at the same time. Not to mention . . . do you know about Santa’s pot butter?”
“Oh, yeah. That explains a lot.”
“Go. Go. Save yourself. I’ll talk to the ceiling for a few hours, then I’ll go to sleep.”
“You’d rather talk to the ceiling than to me?”
“No, I love talking to you. It’s like safe sex. Sex without touching.”
“Hmmm.”
“Nothing personal. I don’t want you to touch me. Don’t want anybody to touch me. The scars. I can’t stand the idea of being touched.”
He unfurled his fist, angled a rakish forefinger at my quilted shoulder, and gave me a sly look. “I don’t know if I can help myself. I might poke your shoulder at any moment.”
“Please, this isn’t a joke.”
He lowered his hand and looked at me gently. “I’m not going to touch you, I promise.”
“It’s terrifying to not know where my power base is, anymore. Before, it was a given. Men wanted me. Any man, anywhere. I knew where I stood. It wasn’t always a fun thing, you know? To know everything about yourself is judged through a lens of sex. Men were shy or nervous or defensive or ... at the opposite extreme, like Gerald, confident but also possessive and arrogant. But here you are, ‘None of the above.’ I don’t have a framework for you. They didn’t teach us about men like you in geisha school.”
“I’m one of a kind.”
I smiled at him. He smiled back. My smile faded. “What was your wife like?” I whispered.
He went very still. The light left him. Hi
s gaze shifted away from me, seeing her. “Smart, pretty, very rich. We met during college. Not at college, at a sports bar. I was working there. Bartending. She was slumming. Home from Harvard. Her family had bought the block. In a sense, she was my landlord.”
“Your wife went to Harvard? That’s not just smart . . . that’s Harvard.”
“She got a degree in law. Top of her class.”
“Did she go into practice?”
“Only for a year or two. Then we had Ethan, and she stayed home.”
“Was she happy to do that?”
“She thought so, at first. She was the rebel in her family. I think marrying me was a way to flip them the bird. But she and her sister were close, and her sister kept trying to lure her back to the fold. Marrying beneath her socio-economic class sounded a lot more romantic than it was.”
“But you became a very successful architect at a young age! How could anyone not be impressed by you?”
He smiled sadly. “Are you flirting?”
“No, for once in my life, I’m having an honest conversation with a man. I’m sure I’ll regret it in the morning.”
“It’ll be our secret.”
I studied him for a moment. Then, “Your marriage was rocky, but you were glad to have a son.”
“Absolutely.”
“I won’t lie and say I can imagine what it feels like to lose—”
“I don’t like to talk about him.” Thomas drew back a little. “Nothing personal. I have my own nightmares.”
Should I tell him about Delta’s children? No, she would have told him herself if she thought it would help. She’d confided in me. But it was private. But maybe . . . “Delta understands what you’ve been through, more than you know. That’s all I’m going to say.”
Thomas tilted his head and scrutinized me. I saw the reference sink in. “Her first two children. I’ve heard about them.”
I groaned. “Not from me, you didn’t.”
“Pike told me.”
“Whew.”
“Around here the secrets travel in smaller circles, but they do get around. That’s all right. It’s among friends.”
“Okay, let’s just be friends.”
He eyed me as if challenged. “Just friends, all right. I’ve got an idea. We’ll be born-again virgins. It’s all the rage with the young folk, I hear. First, I’ll tell you when I lost mine. Virginity, that is.”
Dread slithered up my stomach. I didn’t trade virginity stories. Not with anyone. Or if I did, I made mine up. But I didn’t want to lie to Thomas. “Oh, let’s not—”
“I was sixteen. She was seventeen. She had a lisp and a convertible VW bug.” He arched a brow. “Yes, an older woman with a speech impediment and a soft-top.”
“Good choice.” I said nothing else.
A few long seconds ticked by. Thomas clucked his tongue. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours. Lost-virginity story, that is.”
“Boring. Just boring. No point in—”
“No gory details needed.”
“Why, suh,” I said in a slurred drawl, “no gentleman insists on such information from a lady.”
He frowned lightly as he studied my face. “What’s wrong, Cathy? What happened to you?”
I went very still. I wanted to look away from him, but I couldn’t. He already senses something. You might as well talk. He shared intimate, humiliating moments with you at the hospital, he’s seen your scars, he’s seen you half-naked in the Privy. Talk to him.
“I was thirteen,” I admitted. “He was in his forties. A photographer. My father hired him to create a professional portfolio for me. It happened in his studio one afternoon. And no, it wasn’t rape.”
As Thomas absorbed the information his eyes went cold. For an unnerving moment I thought I’d made a big mistake by confessing. Then he said very softly, “Any time a man that age talks a thirteen-year-old girl into sex, it’s rape.”
“I was worldly. Infinitely confident. Already an expert at flirting with grown men. And well-aware that I had a lot of sexual power. I thought being wanted by an older man was an . . . honor. A victory for me. ‘Look how much I can control men.’ Later I realized how naïve I was, and that he had controlled me, not the other way around. It was a hard lesson to learn.” Even now, prickles of shame stung my face. “I’ve never told anyone that story before.”
Thomas shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them they were still angry, but also gentle. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“What do you really think? Don’t be gallant. Tell the truth.”
His jaw tightened. He raised a hand to touch my face, halted when I flinched, lowered the hand to the quilt. “I meant exactly what I said. You were just a kid, and you were molested. The bastard should have been castrated. That’s what I think. Case closed.”
I searched his eyes. He’s being honest. My innocence is that simple to him. “I like how you see me,” I whispered.
“No wonder you have a love-hate relationship with photographers.”
“I used to pride myself on using them more than they used me. Not anymore. They got the last laugh, Thomas. I’ll never forget looking into a camera lens while I nearly burned to death. I’ll never forget the joy in that photographer’s voice. I don’t ever want anyone to take my picture, again. Ever. I don’t even want to pose for a driver’s license.”
“If you spend your life hiding from photographers, then they will get the last laugh. Don’t worry about being photographed. I’ll help you deal with it.”
“The way you dealt with those photographers who came here to find my grandmother’s farm?”
He arched a brow. “You know all my secrets.”
“Delta told me. And she told me about you going to jail.”
“Not just jail. The chain gang. Hard labor. Come on, I want some sympathy.”
“You pressure-washed gargoyles.”
“No, I pressure-washed Baptist stone monkeys.”
“What?”
“That’s a bedtime story for another night.”
“Thomas, why were you willing to go to jail for me? I’m not being coy. I really want to know.”
He stood slowly, bending over me with immaculately timed care, not to startle me. I drew a deep breath anyway, shifted awkwardly, dislodged my perfect halo of pillow, and turned the bad side of my face to the light and his eyes. He kissed me very lightly, very slowly on the mouth. The kind of kiss that made me shut my eyes instinctively to absorb the sensation. The night seeped in between us, the shadows filling in the soft amalgam of empty unknowns.
Thomas drew back just enough to look down at me. “Does that answer your question?” He turned out the light and left the room.
I had a spot on the center of my stomach, halfway between my navel and my pubes. My sweet spot. The right man’s slow, concentrated fingertip on the sweet spot would slowly reduce me to a boneless puddle of receptive languor. Thomas stroked my sweet spot without laying a hand on me. Amazing.
For the first time since the accident, I put the scarred hand between my legs and rubbed myself to an orgasm. Then I fell asleep easily, and for once, I didn’t dream of fire, but only of warmth, and Thomas.
Chapter 17
Thomas The Next Morning
I woke on Delta and Pike’s living-room couch in a haze of turbulent feelings from the night before. One hand instinctively slid deep inside the voluminous tent of my overalls. I was dreaming about touching Cathy, and touching myself in the process, before I remembered where I was, right about the moment I heard Cora whisper, “He must have an itch.”
My hand retreated to the outer Siberia of the coffee table, knocking over an empty water glass I’d left there. I sat up. Cora and Ivy stood at the far end of the couch, peering at me from under neon-orange yarn caps, like miniature hunters. They were dressed and wearing their coats. Apparently they’d come to say good morning and goodbye, and had gotten more than they bargained for. Ivy frowned at me shrewdly; Cora smiled without a clue
.
“Good morning,” I said. When caught in the act it’s always best to pretend you aren’t doing anything intimate.
“Our aunt’s here,” Cora said wistfully. “We gotta go.”
“Cathy’s already gone home to her grandma’s house,” Ivy informed me. “The sheriff took her. She told Delta that everybody should stay away. She said she has to sink or swim. That nobody can hand her a life jacket, because she’s got to make it herself.” Ivy’s stony façade cracked a frown. “But I don’t even think she can sew. She talked to our aunt about making some curtains for her. Aunt Laney said yes.”
Cora’s smile dwindled. “Aunt Laney promised to call Delta and Cathy next time she’s in jail. They said she had to promise.”
“That’s a good idea.” I swung my feet off the couch and sat up. “I’m going to give you my cell phone number so you can call me, too.”
Cora brightened. Ivy didn’t. “What if Banger eats your phone again?” Ivy inquired coolly.
“Then call Banger, and I’ll listen to his stomach.”
Cora giggled. Even Ivy had to crack a smile. “Cathy gave us her number, too.”
“Good.”
“She put that quilt over you.”
“What quilt?” I looked down. I now wore the quilt from the guest bed. It had sprouted patches of hair. Brown hair, like mine. Ivy pointed at them. “Cathy trimmed your beard. We watched.”
I felt my chin. The sawed-off stump of my beard was now a neatly rounded topiary. “How does it look?”
“You’re handsome,” Cora said.
“You’ve got an Adam’s apple,” Ivy said with a shrug.
“Now, don’t go flattering me.” I folded the quilt carefully, catching my beard scraps. Cora spotted one of the cats and bounded out of the room to tell it goodbye. When I looked up I met Ivy’s shrewd stare again. She sniffed at me. “You were in Cathy’s room last night. Sitting on the floor by the bed. I went to the bathroom, and I saw you. Why were you sitting in there on the floor?”
“We were talking in low voices. It was easier to hear from that spot.”