Chapter Four
“Why are there forty empty coffee cans in Mom’s garage?”
I stand behind Rachel. She sits on the kitchen floor with all the cabinets open. She glances over her shoulder and up at me.
“Maybe for the same reason that there are thirty-seven empty butter tubs in the pantry?” Rachel sighs.
Going through Mom’s house isn’t easy. In fact, it sucks big time, and this is only day one. She stands and rubs her hands across the back of her jeans. “Lunch?”
I nod. We’ve been at this since 7 a.m., but it feels like a lifetime. I follow her into the living room. Mom sits beside Lily who holds a doll on her lap and tries to braid the doll’s hair. Mom gently combs the curls of a black-haired doll that sits on her lap.
My heart cracks. A faraway look inhabits Mom’s eyes, as though her mind can’t even latch onto anything or anyone in this room. She’s fading, and some days that fade seems exponential.
Tatianna, Mom’s nurse, touches Mom’s shoulder. “It’s time for a nap.”
Mom smiles and nods, and without a word stands. Her eyes meet mine and she doesn’t even bother to call me Richard, my father’s name.
“You nice young people are so kind to come over and clean. Thank you.”
She hands Lily the doll, then grasps Tatianna’s hand. Together they walk toward the stairs.
“I didn’t think anything could be worse than her thinking I was Dad, but this is.”
“She doesn’t even think I’m her version of Nurse Cratchett anymore.”
Rachel picks up some crayons on the table where Lily and Mom were coloring before the dolls, and puts them in their box. “I’d rather she complained about me, than get that blank stare.”
Rachel’s voice is low and her gaze focused on the crayons and coloring books, but I hear the ache in my tough big sister’s voice and know she’s trying not to cry. Rachel is cleaning up, keeping busy, moving everything forward with a goal in mind, because that’s what Rachel does, that is how she deals with tough issues and sadness and pain. Rachel digs in, puts her head down, and works.
Me? Well, in the past I Wonderfucked my way through my emotion, but it seems that’s no longer an option. Unless I fuck Tara.
Shit.
We leave Lily with both dolls and I follow Rachel into the kitchen where she pulls out deli meat, a tomato, mustard, and cheese from the fridge. She washes and slices the tomato.
“I had lunch with Tara last week.”
My stomach tightens. I pause where I was pouring chips into a bowl for the three of us to share. These are not the words I expected, and Tara isn’t a topic I want to discuss. I’d rather talk about Mom and the nursing home, scratch that, resident home, or even my inability to heal from my fiancée’s death, than discuss Tara.
“She’s not moving to San Francisco.”
I say nothing because there’s nothing to say.
Rachel stop slicing the tomato and turns to me. “Why did you do that?”
I can’t answer. What can I say? She wrote an expose on the most intimate part of my life? We Wonderfucked, and then she wrote about it and I’m fucking pissed because she betrayed me on the most intimate level.
“Was it because of her article? The one about the Wonderfuck guy? Was she sleeping with you at the same time that she was—”
“Wonderfucking?”
I finish Rachel’s sentence. Her face turns the same shade of red as the tomato she slices.
“She wasn’t with me then,” I say.
And it’s true. Or a truth I’ve tried to maintain the entire time I’ve Wonderfucked. No blurring of lines. None of the women I sleep with know Jake, and no one who knows Jake knows of Wonderfuck.
Or so I thought. Until now. And Tara.
Yeah, Tara messed that up for me or I messed that up for me because I let myself care. I discovered there was a piece of my heart left even after Susie smashed it to smithereens. I made the mistake of giving that little bit to Tara, and she fucking chewed it up and spat it out.
“If you don’t want to be with her, then why do you want her to stay in Los Angeles?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Care to share?”
“Not with you. Not when you’re lunching with Tara and talking about me. No, absolutely not.”
My voice has an edge. I lean against the counter and look at Rachel. “How would you feel if I was lunching with your ex? You know, and discussing you and your life?”
“Not the same.”
“Really? Because I imagine you’d feel like it was a betrayal, because you loved him, and he did something that broke your heart, and I’m your brother and I’m supposed to be on your side. Not on the side of the dumbass that betrayed you.”
Rachel’s nostrils flare, and her gaze turns away from me and back to slicing the tomato. “Point taken.” She slides the knife through the firm red flesh. “I…I don’t think I realized how much…how emotionally involved you were with her.”
“Right. Just because I don’t talk about my feelings doesn’t mean I don’t feel them, okay?” I dump the rest of the potato chips into a bowl.
“You’re right.” Rachel’s voice is softer. “I…I just always assume you’re over something because you don’t talk about it, but that’s not fair and it’s obviously not true. I’m sorry.”
And I feel like an asshole. Because I know in my heart that if I would talk more to Rachel she’d understand, and she’d never intentionally betray me. She’s always been on my side because that’s the kind of sister she is, the kind of woman she is, the kind of person she is, and I’m simply a dick.
She would always pick me, her little brother, over anyone else because that’s how Rachel rolls, but when I act all over it, and laissez faire, and as though things don’t matter to me, well she does what adult people do. She accepts what my actions tell her and believes me.
“It feels a little raw,” I say. “I…I cared for her. I still care for her. I can’t talk about it yet, but I don’t like the idea of you hanging out with her and talking about me because I don’t think we….I….can trust her. She, well, she may not be who she appears to be.”
Rachel’s eyebrows pull tight. By even saying that little bit I’ve set her lawyer, now judge mind, to spin, and while Rachel may not consciously try to dig for answers like Tara does, Rachel will fucking dig, because that’s what Rachel does too. She looks for answers where family is concerned.
What is it with these fucking women that I love? Why do they have to always look for the truth when I know that the truth is the one thing that will break their hearts?
I lean against the counter. “Are you ever loyal to me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Are you loyal to me? Do you fucking have my back? It seems any time I tell you anything you’re off telling someone else about it. One of your girlfriends, one of my ex-girlfriends. What the fuck, Rachel? If I talked about you as much as you talk about me, you’d be pissed.”
Rachel’s jaw drops open and my judge sister, who has an argument for every scenario, is actually silent.
“I mean, I get that you like my former neighbor, and I get that you and Jane were best friends, so you discussed me and Susie, but do you have to hang out with every woman I’m involved with?”
“I can’t even—”
“What? Believe that you do that? Well you do. I mean what was it about Susie exactly that made you think you should have lunch with her every damn week to discuss me and her and our life, or the life that we were trying to build? And now Tara? I mean she came to your house once, got involved with me, and suddenly you two are besties? What the hell?”
“We’re not…I mean…she called and—”
“Oh, so you’re telling me that you didn’t invite her to lunch?”
My sister sucks at poker, she sucks at lying, and she sure as hell sucks at basically anything but the truth, which is an awesome trait to have when you’re a judge, but not so great when you’re doing things that both you and your little brother know are pretty shitty.
“I always have your back, that’s why I used to have lunch with Susie. That’s why I have lunch with Tara, why I—”
“Bullshit. You’re nosy and a control freak and intrusive, and you want to try and micro-manage my existence, and I’ve got one thing to say to that. Butt out. My life is mine.”
Rachel’s mouth closes so hard that the tiny muscle in her jaw flinches. I wait for the blowback that always comes from Rachel as to why she’s right and why I’m wrong. This argument usually hinges on the idea that she’s the oldest and I’m the baby and don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
But this time she’s wrong and we both know it. Her silence proves it. I walk out to the dining room and put the bowl of chips on the table and hope it’s a fast lunch so I can get back to my coffee cans.
***
What’s left of my life?
I pull open the drawer in the bedside table. My finger runs over the top of my Wonderfuck phone. My salvation for five years. The identity in which I sank my cock and buried my pain. Gone. Destroyed. Completely fucked by love.
Fuck.
I can’t get hard except for the one woman who betrayed me. Freud would have a field day with my fucked up mind. How messed up is it that I only want the women who fuck me over?
What the hell?
The edges of my soul are fraying and my body is peeling away from my bones. I hold my Wonderfuck phone in my palm and pace the floor. Like a mother-fucking caged cat I have all this…this…pain and rage, and whatever else the fuck emotion I want to ignore, is bottled up and ready to explode. Fuck or fight. Fuck or fight.
I need relief. God, yes.
I refuse to fall inside a bottle again like after Susie. Where can I find relief? Where can I sink into what I want and what I need and who I have to be? I can’t exist like this. The need eats away at my insides and I’m desperate for release.
I flip open the phone and punch in a number. A number that I know well. ‘The London? Tonight?’
I wait. I stare at the screen. Want. Need. Rage. Desperation. They careen through me, making me feel like a ship on an angry storm-soaked sea.
Finally, a reply.
‘Yes.’
Desire pulses through me. Adrenalin floods my bloodstream. Fuck, yeah. My cock is hard.
When it was published, I read the fucking article. I read every damn word. The article that turned my carefully crafted existence into a freak show for every person in Los Angeles to see and judge and talk about.
Fuck the circus. I’ve never liked clowns.
I press the phone into my pocket and know that this, tonight, the London, is my first step back from the edge of the abyss, the beginning back to my Wonderfucking days.