Chapter 07
April
This month, my name is Honey Adams. No, really it is. My daddy says the second he saw me all bundled up in my sweet pink blanket there in the nursery, he just knew I was going to be as sweet as honey. And he’s right.
My sister’s name is Angel because that’s what Daddy said she is. It’s her baby being baptized. My darling little nephew, Noah. He looks so cute in his little white baptismal gown with everyone oohing and ahhing over him.
Daddy’s so proud of his new grandson he’s paid for a party almost as lavish as the reception he gave for Angel’s wedding to John. There’s a huge buffet table, an open bar, even a DJ to help us all celebrate. Angel looks tired and John’s a little annoyed, but I figure they should just put smiles on their faces and be glad someone else is picking up the tab. They’d never be able to afford a party like this, not on what John makes. That’s what I heard Daddy say.
I can’t wait until it’s my turn. I’ll be a gorgeous bride, and when I start having babies, I just know they’ll be even more adorable than little Noah. I’ll be the best mother ever, and I won’t ever complain and cry like Angel does. I won’t turn into what Daddy calls a “puddin” either.
Daddy’s carrying Noah around as if he were a trophy. Mom’s over by the bar, supervising the caterer. I’ve got on the cutest new pink skirt, but there isn’t anyone to talk to here. I’m bored, and when I spot Joey from across the room, suddenly I’m all smiles.
“Jooooey!”
My daddy and Joey’s daddy are old hunting buddies, and I guess I’ve known Joey since I was born. There’s seven years difference between us, which used to matter a whole lot when we were kids but doesn’t so much, now. At least it shouldn’t.
He looks up from his conversation with some redhead I don’t know. He’s got a drink in his hand. He looks really good, but then, he always does. I’ve had a crush on Joey since the summer between fourth and fifth grade, when he used to come over to our house almost every day to swim in the pool. He used to jackknife off the diving board and come up with the water slicking his hair back, and everything about him was golden.
He smiles when he sees me, and I can’t help throwing the redhead a triumphant glance as he says goodbye to her and crosses the room to get to me.
“Honey. Long time no see.”
I give him a coy glance. “And whose fault is that?”
“All mine, I guess.” He lifts his glass and sips, and it’s impossible to miss the looking-over he’s giving me. “You look good.”
Of course I do. Thousands of dollars worth of orthodontia, plastic surgery and several years of an eating disorder have changed the chubby girl with an overbite and glasses. I flip my hair over one shoulder and give him a smile I know is blinding white and perfect.
“Thanks. You do, too.”
Getting together with Joey would guarantee daddy would stop calling me his “other daughter.” He’d throw me a wedding twice as fancy as Angel’s, I know he would. Daddy doesn’t like John, but Joey’s like the son he never had.
We chat for a while, idle small talk about our jobs and lives. I know what he does and where he lives. Joey’s mom and mine are best friends, and you can believe I hear all the gossip. He’s got a great job and house and a smoking hot car, and he doesn’t have a girlfriend. I know that for a fact, because his mother’s starting to get a little worried, even though I’ve heard my mom tell his there’s no way he’s gay, and she shouldn’t worry so much.
I tell him about my job, which is so boring I can barely stand to talk about it. Joey’s nodding in all the right places and making little noises like he’s listening, but his gaze keeps going to my chest. It’s quite a bit larger than it used to be and I like showing it off. My nipples tighten a bit under his gaze. He notices.
“So, Joey.” I keep my voice a little breathy, just like I’ve practiced in private until I can get it just right. I lean forward to take his wrist and bring his drink up to my mouth. “What are we drinking?”
I take a sip from his glass. He’s got whiskey—nasty, nasty stuff. I swallow it down, but I don’t let go of his wrist.
“I’m drinking Jameson. And it looks like you are, too.” Joey takes my other hand and puts it under the glass so he can let go while I’m left holding it.
I’m a little confused. “Huh?”
“Why don’t you keep that one. I’ll get myself another.”
He nods a little and backs up a step, then turns on his heel and heads toward the bar. I’m left blinking, holding his glass, and shit, shit, shit, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go.
“Well, how about a freshener?” I catch up to him and flash him another smile.
“Sure, Honey.” Joey waves to the bartender and asks for another whiskey.
“Actually, I’d like a white zinfandel.”
I hand the guy Joey’s old glass and he hands us two new drinks. I sip mine right away, but Joey holds on to his and doesn’t drink from it. The redhead’s watching us without even bothering to hide it.
People in the corner are laughing, and we both turn to look. It’s Joey’s dad Frank and my dad. Frank’s shaking Daddy’s hand and clapping him on the back. They’re passing cigars, too. Joey watches them for a moment before he turns his back, and because I want to keep his attention, I turn away, too.
“Some party.” Joey lifts his glass.
He’s right, but I don’t really want to talk about the party, which is Angel’s, not mine. “Your dad’s having a good time.”
“Doesn’t he always, at parties?” Joey’s got a smile I heard my mom say could spread a nun’s knees, but right now it looks more like a smirk.
“Everyone likes a party, don’t they? Especially when someone else is paying for it?” I sip my wine and look around the room, crammed full of people. “Oooh, look! There’s Mindy Heverling!”
I smile and wave to her. She went to school with Joey, Angel and Joey’s brother Eddie. Mindy turns with a half-smile to wave at me, but in a second her face changes and she turns back around. Why’s she cutting me cold? Angel’s the one who used to steal her boyfriends, not me. Well, screw her. I look back at Joey, but now he’s looking at Mindy, and I realize she wasn’t cutting me cold at all. She was ignoring him.
“Didn’t Mindy used to go out with Eddie?”
“Yes.”
He’s still staring at her. I feel a little bad, bringing it up. Eddie died when Joey was in high school. Nobody talks about it much. In fact, I don’t want to talk about it, so I take his elbow and make my move.
“It’s hot in here. Want to take a walk with me?”
I know Daddy booked this place because it had a ballroom big enough to hold all of his friends, but the gardens are nice, too. Lots of color-coordinated tulips and daffodils, a Greek-looking patio and two cement fish ponds with carp the size of my arm…and a maze. It’s not a very complicated maze but all I really want is to get to the center of it with Joey.
After that, it’s not long before my tongue’s in his ear and his hand’s up my skirt.
“Honey,” Joey says when I reach for his belt buckle. “Aren’t you a bad girl?”
“Do you like bad girls?” His thighs are hard under my ass and my knees are pressing against the metal bench as I straddle him. I work the zipper on his trousers and slide a hand inside.
I’m looking at his face when I say it, and I’m expecting to see the look guys get when they’re about to get some action. Joey’s expression surprises me, makes me pause. He looks serious and considering, not at all like I want him to look, which is glassy eyed with lust.
“Not really.”
I falter, my hand closing around his thing. It’s hard enough, anyway, so even if he’s saying he doesn’t like bad girls, he’s still turned on. At least, I hope he is.
“N…no?”
Joey shifts a little and puts his hands on my hips to hold me from sliding off his lap. “Not really. No. I like girls who are good.”
“I can be good, Joey.”
Oh, he’s teasing me, playing with words. He’s always been good at that. A brain. Even in high school, he was always top of the class.
He winces a little and I loosen my grip, figuring I was holding too tight. His thing throbs in my fingers. Maybe he’s worried about being caught, but we’d hear anyone coming through the maze in plenty of time to button up, if we have to.
“I bet you can.”
His thumb slides into position against my tootsie. I bite my lower lip and lean in to kiss him. He turns his head so my lips land on the corner of his. I settle for nibbling his jaw and neck. His skin is warm and clean, and a little shiver tickles my spine.
This is Joey, but he’s also a stranger.
The thought makes me bite down a little, and he winces. He slides a finger beneath the lacy edge of my panties and inside me. I take his thing out all the way and start stroking him harder.
“Honey…slow down…” His voice is hoarse. His fingers are moving faster against me, no matter what he’s telling me to do.
“Nuh-uh.” I shake my head. “I want this.”
“I can see that.” His finger moves in and out of me while his thumb keeps pressing on my bump.
“Ooh, Joey,” I moan, pushing myself onto his hand. “Tootsie likes that.”
He makes a little noise, a kind of snuffling snort. He’s got his face turned even more away. He’s smiling.
“…does she?”
“Mmm, hmmm. Oh…Oh! Oh, God…Joey!”
I’ve been with other guys, it’s not that I’m a virgin or anything. But this is Joey, so I’m determined to make it so good he’ll be back for more.
“Fuck my tootsie…oh, oh…OH!”
I never shout when I have a real orgasm, but guys like it when girls make a lot of noise and wriggle around a lot. I want Joey to like me. A lot.
“Yes, yes!” I writhe around on his hand and finally fall forward to put my face on his shoulder. I’ve still got his thing in my hand. It’s not as hard as it was a couple minutes ago. I look up.
“Want me to put your thing in my mouth?”
At first he says nothing. He takes his fingers out of me. This position is starting to hurt my knees.
“Did you like that?”
I lick my lips. “Mmm, yeah, that was great, baby. Want me to suck you, now? Or use my hand?”
“Suck my what?” His eyes are heavy-lidded and his expression inscrutable. He’s playing with words again.
“Your thing. Your you-know.”
“My cock? You want to suck my cock, Honey?”
“Yes!” I nod. I don’t really want to suck his cock…I mean, I will because this is Joey, the guy I’ve had a super-mega crush on forever, and it’s what guys like. But sucking cock is sort of icky.
“Honey, somehow I don’t think your father would approve you sucking my cock out here in the middle of the maze.”
I glare. “I don’t do everything my father approves of.”
He’s getting soft, so I move to get down and take him in my mouth. Joey stops me by grabbing my elbow to keep me on his lap.
“Why are you doing this?”
“C’mon, Joey, it’s not like we don’t know each other. Remember when you were in grad school and you came over to my parents’ house for Christmas dinner?”
His thing…his cock…is getting harder again. His head tips back against the bench. His eyes are closed. His thighs tense and relax under my ass.
“Yeah.”
“And there was mistletoe?”
“Jesus, Honey…” He licks his lips and they part as he half-gasps. “That was a long time ago. You were just a kid.”
“You still kissed me.” I lean forward to whisper in his ear. I lick his lobe, then nibble it. His thing jerks in my fingers. “And I decided right then I’d marry you.”
At that, his eyes fly open. This time, I’m off his lap and almost on my ass on the ground before I catch my balance. He takes my hand out of his pants.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” He runs a hand through his hair and does this whole weird squirmy thing where he tucks himself back in his pants and runs his hands over the rest of him like he’s making sure his clothes aren’t wrinkled. “Who said anything about getting married?”
I straighten my own clothes and turn to face him on the bench. “Maybe not right away, but—”
“But nothing. But never.”
That stings, and I frown. I cross my arms. “You were happy enough to put your hand up my skirt.”
Joey looks stunned. “Holy shit, Honey. Fucking hell.”
“What?” I cry, offended. “Is it such a crazy idea? We’d be great together!”
“How do you figure that?” Joey asks. “You don’t even know me!”
“What you do mean, I don’t know you? I’ve known you forever! Mom and Daddy know your parents, they’d love to see us hooked up. You’ve got a great job and could easily support me and we’d make beautiful babies…”
“What fucking decade are you living in?” Joey’s voice is even, but bemused. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with wanting to get married?”
“Usually you marry someone you love, who loves you.”
“But I do love you! What, you like redheads better?” I lean toward him, my tone snide. “You’d rather hook up with that nobody than me? How about Mindy Heverling? You know, there was a rumor about you and her—”
I reach for his crotch again, but he moves away before I can touch him.
“Don’t.”
I give him the look that usually gets me whatever I want. “Joey. Of course we can date for a while, first. This was just a little taste of what I can give you.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” I stand and put my hands on my hips. “I’m not good enough for you? I’m good enough to suck you off but not good enough to date?”
Joey stands, his hands up. “Honey, cut it out. This isn’t flattering.”
“Oh, is that it?” Tears burn in my eyes and I swipe them away. “You’re turning me down?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know how many guys would love to take me out?”
“A lot, I’m sure. Why don’t you go back inside and find one? I think the party’s still going on—”
I slap him, hard enough to turn his head. “How dare you!”
The imprint of my fingers is first white, then slowly fill in red as I watch. I’m breathing hard. My nipples are hard. Heat has spread up my throat to my cheeks. Finally, I’m turned on.
So, I slap his other cheek just as hard. Joey puts a hand to the marks as he slowly turns his face to look at me.
“You’re lucky I’m a gentleman,” he says evenly. “Or I’d knock you on your ass for that.”
I sneer, getting up in his face. “I’d like to see you try.”
My thighs are trembling. My tootsie’s gone all hot and soft and I think about his fingers inside me. If he did that again now, I’d be wet for him.
I lift my hand to hit him again, but this time he catches my wrist. His grip is tight and it hurts just enough to make me gasp. Is he going to hit me? Oh, is he going to push me?
Joey lets me go. I stumble back, just a little and look up at him. Disgust has twisted his face, and I realize I’ve gone too far. I reach for his hand, but he’s backing away.
“Joey, wait, wait. I’m sorry. I wanted to move too fast, I know. We could take things slower…”
“Honey, I don’t want to go out with you. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t want to date you, be your boyfriend or marry you.”
“Well, why not?” I cry suddenly, feeling more naked than when he had his hand in my panties. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” Joey puts his hands in his pockets. “But you really don’t even know me.”
“I know everything I need to know!” I step toward him, and he steps back. It’s a dance I don’t like.
“No,” Joey says. “You don’t.”
Then he leaves me in the middle of the maze and I have to find my way back to the party alone. When I get back, he’s gone. So is the redhead.
“Did you leave with the other girl?”
“No. That would have been a good ending to the story, though, wouldn’t it?”
Joe’s grin was unabashed and I had to return it.
“Are you on Daddy’s shit-list, now?”
He shrugged, tipping his head up toward the warm spring sunshine. It shot threads of yellow across his face. It was our first lunch outside of the atrium since last October, and the fresh air and flowers gave everything a festive air.
“I doubt she told him. What would she have said?”
“True. You’d better hope she didn’t tell him you touched her tootsie, though, or else it sounds like Daddy might show up at your door with a shotgun.”
Joe cracked open an eye to look at me. We both started laughing, which escalated into a flurry of guffaws. Sunshine and giggles. It felt great.
“Tootsie,” I said again, just because it sounded so ridiculous.
“Lot of good touching it did.” Joe’s laughter is like a stream chuckling over rocks, swift and strong, dipping down every so often. “She didn’t even get off.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sadie,” Joe said. “I might not always be able to tell when a woman does, but I sure as hell know when she doesn’t.”
We laughed harder. My sides started to hurt. I had to wipe away a tear. I caught his eye and we both sobered a bit.
“She sounds like maybe she still thought of herself as that chubby girl with braces, even though she’s done a lot to move away from that image.”
“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?”
We rarely discuss our careers. I didn’t, in fact, even know what he did for a living. His words sobered me further, brought me back to the reality instead of letting me stay in the fantasy. I cleared my throat and cut my gaze from his.
“I can’t possibly analyze someone I don’t even know.”
Joe stopped laughing, too. He wadded up a napkin and threw it toward the garbage can. “I liked her when she was that chubby girl with braces. She was a good kid.”
“So why not go out with her? It sounds like it would make your families happy.”
Joe gave me a look. “Daddy might be thrilled, Sadie, but I could assure you Mommy would throw a shit fit.”
“Ah.” I hadn’t thought about that.
“Besides, I could never go out with a woman who calls her pussy a tootsie.”
That set us off again. I felt bad for laughing at poor Honey, who sounded like she had real issues, not the least an Electra complex. Leave it to Joe to get jerked off in a garden at a baptismal party.
“Everywhere you go,” I said when the laughter again had died down. “How do you do it?”
He was quiet for a moment or two. “I’m a good-looking guy. It opens doors.”
I’d been staring at his profile, fascinated by the way the sun cast shadows on his skin. He looked up and caught me and I looked away.
“You don’t always have to say yes, Joe.”
“Sadie,” Joe murmured. “I don’t always say yes. I only tell you about the ones I say yes to.”
Which was enough. I laughed again, but it sounded fake after the true guffaws we’d shared. I wrapped up my trash, disappointed as always that the hour had passed and I had no more excuse to linger.
“They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.” His tone was light but his expression serious.
“Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.”
“Maybe it’s all they want to see.”
I stood to put my garbage in the can. I brushed some crumbs off my hands. “Maybe you need a mesh suit. Or a shark cage. Or maybe you just need to stop tossing out so much chum.”
Joe smiled. “Then what would we have to talk about at lunch?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, and it was easy to see he knew it. “So, what was the rumor about you and Mindy Heverling?”
Joe scuffed the gravel with the toe of his shoe. “Mindy was my brother’s girl.”
There was a story there, one he wasn’t telling. One I had no right, perhaps, to hear. “And?”
He ran a hand through his hair and shifted on the bench, all part of the ritual I’d grown used to seeing when I dug too deep. Most of the time it was enough to get me to back off and change the subject. These times weren’t about analysis, after all, not about pushing buttons.
“Never mind,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Eddie was a year younger than me. He was the smart one, I guess you could say.” Joe laughed.
“And you were the pretty one?”
I liked the fact he knew when I was teasing, and he took it. “You got it.”
“So, what happened?” I thought I could guess.
Joe leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands linked. The gravel seemed suddenly to have captured his interest quite thoroughly. “She got pregnant.”
“Oh?” I hadn’t expected that answer.
He turned his face toward me. “Yeah.”
It took me a second to understand. “Oh. Oh!”
Joe nodded. “More like, ‘oh, fuck.’”
“What happened?”
“She had an abortion. I had to borrow the money from my dad to pay for it. He told me I was a disappointing bastard, and he was right. Eddie never knew about it. By then he was sick. He had leukemia. Anyway, he…died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Joe,” I said softly and waited until he looked at me. “I’m still sorry.”
I might have reached for him, but we didn’t touch. We never touched. He nodded slightly.
“Thanks.” He got up, the story told, our time spent. “Oh, I almost forgot.”
Joe pulled a tissue-wrapped package from his inside suit pocket. He held it out on the palm of his hand. “Happy birthday.”
I was already reaching for it with the automatic response most people make when an object’s offered. At his words, though, I hesitated. The package tipped from his hand and missed mine, hitting the ground, where I bent to pick it up with a hasty apology.
“You didn’t have to get me something.” I blushed. Hard. “I hope it didn’t break.”
“I think it’s okay. Open it.”
I did. It was a small hand-dipped candle from a local boutique. A pale purple, it smelled distinctively of lavender. d
“How did you know?” I asked, lifting the candle and sniffing it.
“You told me.” Joe sounded surprised, as if my question made no sense. “You said it was your favorite scent.”
“I did?” I wrapped the candle back in the tissue and held it close to me. “Really? It is, actually.”
Joe smiled. “I thought you did. Anyway. Happy birthday, Sadie.”
“Thank you.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the gift I’d decided not to give him, and gave it to him anyway. It was a book, the latest hardcover thriller from a well-known author. “Surprise. I hope you don’t already have it.”
He didn’t. We beamed at each other until our smiles said too much and we had to look away. Joe took a few steps back before turning and heading off down the path. I stared after him, the faint scent of lavender surrounding me.
* * *
Much is said about brilliance. Less attention is paid to those who live next to it. Spouses, children, assistants…if anyone thinks of us at all, it’s generally to remark upon how lucky we are to bask in the light of genius.
In the first years of our life together, I basked in Adam’s brilliance. At parties, I was proud to introduce myself as Adam Danning’s wife, to accept compliments on his behalf. I was often asked if I, too, was a poet.
“No,” Adam always said proudly. “My Sadie is a doctor.”
Not once did anyone seem surprised I wasn’t also a literary whiz, but I always enjoyed that moment of expectation in their eyes while they waited to see if I was. I never wished for the sort of creative brilliance Adam had, nor envied it of him. There wasn’t room in our house for another Adam. We’d have been like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, colander helmets and all, prepared to battle.
Sylvia Plath gassed herself. Ernest Hemingway shot off his face. Richard Brautigan apparently grew tired of trout fishing and also took the way of the gun.
Does madness bring creativity? Or does creativity cause madness? Can an artist create without the ups so high and the downs so low? As a psychologist, I felt I should know the answers. I should be able to understand my brilliant, talented husband. Yet, I didn’t.
The mood swings baffled me. When I needed to work, I went to my desk. I read. I studied. I accomplished my goals steadfastly, each in a row so tidy I could literally check them off on a list.
Adam disappeared into his office for hours and hours to emerge with bleary eyes, cursing and moaning, saying he was unable to write. He sometimes wept and threw dishes against the wall, only to laugh himself hoarse an hour later at inane television programs. My lack of comprehension about his creative impulses infuriated him.
We clashed. We fought. We made brilliant, creative, genius love that sometimes left us both weeping.
I knew him, but I didn’t understand him.
I learned to ignore his moods as unrelated to me or anything I’d done, and to leave him alone when he was mopish. I read his poems when they were published, as they all were, to increasing popularity and acclaim. I went with him to parties where sycophants fawned on him and fed us champagne and caviar, where placards with his face and the cover of his books stared at us from across the room.
I loved Adam and he loved me, and we made a life that was full of ups and downs—but it worked. I studied. He created. He pulled me along and I was not his anchor, for Adam wouldn’t be anchored. I was, instead, his ballast. Something to keep him from bouncing quite so high or diving quite so low.
His first book tour didn’t land him on Oprah or The Tonight Show. His publisher booked him at colleges and bookstores where he appeared in his leather jacket and earring and read his poems to rapt audiences of suburban housewives and English majors. There was talk of his being considered as Pennsylvania’s next Poet Laureate, a possibility that might have been pulled from the thin air of his publisher’s hopefulness but had Adam floating on that high for weeks.
Then he hit a tree and woke up in a hospital bed, and everything was gone. If he’d written anything since then, I didn’t know about it. I was afraid to suggest it. Writing to Adam had been as necessary as breathing or eating or fucking. He couldn’t do any of those things on his own any longer. Maybe he couldn’t write, either. Writing had been Adam’s addiction. His high. There was no mistaking the fact he suffered from its lack, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it.
Much like the shoemaker’s children who went barefoot, the husband of the psychologist went without therapy. Adam was adamant he didn’t need it, wouldn’t have it.
“If I didn’t need it before, when I was half out of my fucking head, I don’t need it now,” he said. “I’m a quadriplegic, Sadie, not crazy.”
I didn’t bother to explain that I don’t deal with “crazy” people, and neither do my colleagues. Adam had made up his mind. His accident hadn’t made him any less stubborn.
So we focused on the chair, the hourly medical care, the minutiae of evacuating his bladder and bowels and caring for a body that could no longer protect itself even from its own weight. We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but I no longer knew him.
Adam had always been brighter. Stronger. I’d been content to circle him the way the earth revolves around the sun, dependent on him to lead me.
What happens when the weaker becomes the stronger? When my independence became a choice no longer, but a necessity if we were both going to survive? The places we’d built for ourselves no longer fit. Like poor Honey, we were trapped in the past, stuck developmentally, locked into habits that had served us in the past but weren’t allowing us to grow.
Once, it had been enough to be what Adam wanted. Now, I tried to be what he needed. The two didn’t seem to be the same. The night I got the call that Adam had been taken to the hospital, my first fear had been that I’d lost him. Four years later, I’d somehow lost myself, instead.
I’d never know the woman I’d have been if I hadn’t met Adam. Until I met Joe, I hadn’t wondered.
Who was I now?