If You Could See What I See (18 page)

I tried not to laugh. I explained to her that, one, I knew she was grounded, and two, I didn’t think she should be able to go to cooking class, as she’d been expelled for smoking pot.

“I had a calculus test,” she whispered. “I’d studied for it, I knew what to do, but I was nervous.”

“And you thought smoking a joint was the answer?”

“Yes, I did.”

“In the boys’ locker room?”

“Sure, why not? No one was in there except for us.”

Us?
“You and Cody, the boyfriend?”

“Oh, my gosh!” I heard Cassidy suck in her breath before she hissed again, “It says here on the website that they’ll teach us how to make lemon mousse cake, orange petit tarts, Baked Alaska, strawberry cheesecake, and a chocolate mint mousse. I would love to learn how to do that. Wouldn’t you?”

“It does sound yummy. You know I don’t cook.” I hate cooking.

“You will here. This will be so much fun. Grandma Brianna taught me. I love to cook and bake with her. She understands how the tiniest bit of spice or vanilla can change the entire taste of the dish.”

“Yes, the tiniest bit.” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Did you like the bouquet I left at your door yesterday?”

“Oh, honey, I loved it. It was exactly what I needed. You are so thoughtful, Cassidy.”

“I wrapped a purple ribbon around it because you look good in purple.”

“I’m into organic fruits and vegetables now, too, when I cook. I won’t use anything but organic. It brings out the flavor naturally, without the dilution of the pesticides and herbicides and all the other junk.”

“And how is pot smoking healthy, you organic-food-loving twerp?”

“Pot is an herb.”

“No, it isn’t. It turns your mind to lazy mush. It alters your reality. It’s toxic for your physical health and it’s a gateway drug—”

“Oh, my gosh again, Aunt Meggie!” Cassidy’s voice pitched in excitement, then hushed back down to a whisper. “I clicked on another page on this website and they have cooking classes for hors d’oeuvres. We have to do that class, too. I’m going to ask Grandma Brianna to come when she’s not on her sex book tour. It would be so much fun if we all did it together. Do you think Grandma Regan would do it with us, too?”

“Grandma Brianna, yes. Grandma Regan, no. She says that domesticity makes her feel dizzy. I’ll make you a deal, Cassidy. No pot at all, no drinking for three weeks”—I thought it best to start small and have realistic goals—“and we’ll sign up together for the next round of dessert classes. What do you say?”

She paused, she thought, she made a
hmmmm
sound. “Okay, Aunt Meggie, I’ll do it.”

“I’m delighted.”

“What about the hors d’oeuvres class? If I don’t drink or smoke pot for six weeks after that, can we do that one, too?”

“Yes. Hors d’oeuvres class it is.”

What other answer would a good aunt give?

 

I watched Blake on television later that week while I was eating popcorn dipped in peanut butter and strawberries dipped in melted chocolate chips. I was in plaid pajama bottoms, one pink and one green sock, and a gray, fifteen-year-old University of Oregon sweatshirt. Hard to be this glamorous.

There had been a shooting, gang related.

He spoke well. Tight, crisp, factual, calm.

He was a man you could trust. A man who was courageous and strong and had the whole thing under control. Your neighborhood was safe again, and the bad guy was behind bars. His gun was back in his holster, and he would be riding away on his white horse into the sunset. He was The Cowboy In Charge.

“I want you to come home and get naked in my bed,” I said out loud to the Blake on TV. “Come stark-naked. For a few hours.”

I watched Blake answer more questions, those gray-blue eyes drifting to the camera briefly, insightful, hard, but personable, too, as if he had a relationship with all the people of Portland. If my skin could catch on fire from staring at him, it would. I imagined myself prancing around in flames in front of him. Tantalizing.

“Afterward, before breakfast, you will go home, Mr. Sex on Wheels. You will give me a kiss on the cheek. You will not ask me on a date, I will not tell you I like you, we will not develop any sort of emotional bond or commitment where either you or I could get hurt. You will leave.”

I tossed a strawberry up in the air and caught it with my teeth, the melted chocolate splattering on my cheek. I wiped it off with my sweatshirt sleeve.

“I will go on creeping through my life and I will handle my flashbacks and day nightmares and night nightmares as best I can with the blood and the rats so I don’t cartwheel straight out of my mind and I will work until I can’t think straight and then you will come over at night and we’ll strip down naked and start our hoo-ha all over again. How does that sound, Blakey?”

I tossed another chocolate-covered strawberry up, same result.

When they flipped to another story, I turned off the TV and all the lights except for my strand of white lights looped through the rafters. Jeepers climbed up and hissed, then went to sleep on my chest.

I watched what happened over a year ago in my head like I was watching a scary movie that I knew would end badly.

This probably sounds self-destructive. It is. But I have found it more destructive if I don’t let the memories in. If I shut them out, I become more mentally screwed. They stalk me, trail me, taunt me continually, but if I run through them and feel the terror, the utter shock, the shearing pain, it will leave me in semi-ruins, but that particular memory will retreat for a while. I closed my eyes and gave in, letting the past I’d buried smash through. I rocked myself back and forth, back and forth.

I saw Blake’s headlights come down the street about two hours later.

I went to sleep about one in the morning.

I felt better knowing he was there.

 

I did not have a regular sex life during my marriage.

Why?

Aaron often withheld sex.

He used sex as a weapon. If I was late getting home one night from filming, we wouldn’t have sex for a week.

If we had a fight, no sex for two weeks. If I was out of town for work, it could be three weeks. This was combined with the oh-so-emotionally-debilitating silent treatment, as if I were a child who needed to be punished.

I would ask him to talk to me, to work out the problem, to tell me how he was feeling, and he would sigh and act pained, as if I was too stupid to talk to. Or he would say, “There’s nothing wrong,” I would say that of course there was something wrong, because he wasn’t speaking to me, and he would deny it again. He would look at me with fury, reproach, or condescension.

Although our sex life was uncontrollably passionate when we were dating, it started to change after we married. About six months into our marriage, Aaron started to criticize my lovemaking. Try that one on for size. He stripped me of confidence in the bedroom faster than he could have flipped the sheets off.

“You’re uncreative, rigid . . . too slow to orgasm . . . don’t try hard enough . . . show some enthusiasm . . . your foreplay is like being scratched by a raccoon . . . you’re loose inside, squeeze, damn it, squeeze . . . I wish you had bigger boobs . . . have you lost weight, I don’t like it . . . seems like your rhythm is off . . . you’re a prude, that’s what you are . . . cold . . . you make weird sounds, I almost laugh listening to you . . . you groaned like a bear . . . What? Am I boring you? . . . maybe you’re gay, that’s why you’re not turned on . . . arch. Come on, arch . . .”

The truth was, I wasn’t good in bed with Aaron past the first year. I was probably quite poor. It is extremely hard to be good in bed when you don’t love or at least care deeply about the person you’re with. You have to feel safe. Wanted. Welcome.

It eventually became hard for me to kiss Aaron on the lips. Kissing is so much more personal than sex. He liked French kissing. I used to, but as our relationship tanked, I became repulsed by French kissing him. I felt like I was being invaded by a wet, flicking sponge. I sure didn’t want to give him a blow job, and I didn’t want to spend any time in foreplay, because I didn’t love him. I didn’t like him. I wanted out of his arms.

The tragic thing about sex is how horribly it can mess you up in the head and how utterly alone it can make you feel. If you are with the wrong person, if it’s not a healthy relationship, if you feel hurt or threatened or demeaned, it’s like you’re having lonely, shattering, even dangerous sex with yourself, only there is someone bucking on top of you. You don’t look in each other’s eyes, you don’t kiss, you don’t move with love and thoughtfulness, with giving, there’s zero heart connection.

You roll out of bed, and a piece of you—dignity, self-respect, esteem—is still left in that bed. The best part of yourself—your soul—has been left between the sheets.

That’s how I felt with Aaron.

Like every time I rolled out of bed, I was less than when I’d crawled into it.

But I wanted to have sex with Blake. I wanted that physical bliss. I wanted to forget. It would be lusty and safe. He’s a good man. He’s stable. I could kiss him on the lips. I betcha I could even French kiss him. When he left, I could go back to fighting the clawing, black feathered rats in my head all by myself.

That’s the way I wanted it.

 

“We’re going bungee jumping?” I pictured myself springing up and down in midair, held by a harness my face turning to white cream. “Hell no. And I mean heeeell no.”

“Do not say no to your grandma,” Grandma said. She rapped her knuckles on my desk. She was in her rubies today with a purple dress. “Better manners, Meggie. Be classy, not a weak chicken.”

“I am not going to bungee jump,” Tory said. “My boobs would hit me in the face and knock me out. I am not risking damage to this fantabulous surgery I’ve had done.”

“Your boobs will be safe,” Grandma said. “Wear two bras. Let’s go, girls.”

“I can’t bungee jump, Grandma,” Lacey said, as she adjusted the vogue, black maternity dress my mother had bought her.

“Of course you can’t. I would never let my great-granddaughter bungee jump when she is but a tiny, curled-up butterfly in your stomach, but you’re coming with us.”

“Great.” Lacey laughed and clapped. “I will love this. Love bungee jumping.”

“Grandma,” I said, “I appreciate the invitation, but I have to stay here. I have about two hundred e-mails to answer, calls to return, we’ve got a shipment problem in Georgia, packing issues in Seattle, I’ve got calls in to places for the fashion show—”

“I can’t go, either,” Tory said. “I’ve got a meeting with that creepy man from Wanda’s Closet. He gives me the creeps.”

“I can go,” Lacey said, so smug. “Meggie, Tory, quit whining.”

“Cancel all of it.” Grandma cut her hands through the air. “All work and no play makes a woman’s estrogen dry up. I worked too hard my whole life and now I’m making up for it because I’m old. You girls follow me out this door right now or I will announce to all of our employees that I’m going to double their salaries and give them free teeth whitening.”

“Teeth whitening?” Lacey said.

“Yes, it’s not covered by the dental plan, but it should be.”

“I could use a teeth whitening,” Tory said.

“Teeth are not supposed to glow in the dark like yours, Tory,” Lacey said. “You know that, don’t you? Your teeth are so white, they’re almost blue.”

“And you have teeth like a hamster, Lacey.”

“That’s enough, ladies!” Grandma said. “Out you go.”

“I think I’m going to barf,” Tory said. “I don’t like heights.”

“I feel sick,” I said. “I don’t want to be attached to ropes and thrown off a bridge. I am not going to bungee jump. I’ll probably wet my pants. Too scary.”

Grandma leveled her gaze at me. “You’ve become too scared to live, Meggie, and I will push that fear out of you if it’s the last thing I do. And the other last thing I’m going to do is get rid of the fighting between you girls. It’s nauseating. Move your butts.”

 

Bungee jumping is not for the faint of heart.

Grandma was strapped in first because “clearly I’m the one with courage. De-wimp yourselves, girls.”

I would go next, then Tory.

Lacey said to us, as we trudged onto a bridge, above a rushing river, frozen in fear, “I am so glad I’m pregnant. So glad.” She then turned and tossed her cookies.

Grandma said to the employees of Bungee Boogles, “I have no fear. Strap me in and let me rip.”

I said to them, “I think I peed my pants a bit already.”

Tory said, “If my heart pounds any harder it will come out of my mouth. Be ready to catch it.”

The employees were thrilled with Grandma, telling her she was “awesome, ma’am, you are wicked awesome!”

Grandma threw her arms straight out, smiled, tipped her head to the heavens, and said, “I am living my life, yes, I am.” She then walked to the edge; listened for their count of three, two, one; and did a swan dive, elegantly, gracefully, with utter strength and courage.

Her jump was like her personality.

I tiptoed to the edge, my body wiggling like a slug on a hook, and declared, “I am going to die. The lines will snap. I will unravel. I will be in the river within seconds. Tory, make sure you take care of the pets that Regan brought me.”

“I’m not taking care of the pets. I don’t like animals,” she snapped. “They bite, they poop, they slobber.”

“This is the last thing I ask of you before I die.” My knees were knocking. I peed a tiny squirt in my pants, I know I did.

“Ask Lacey to do it.” Tory gave me a frustrated look. “I am not taking care of any animals even if this is your last request. Grandma is a certifiably batty old woman. She’s not only lost her marbles, she has eaten them. This is what we’ll be like when we’re old. Doing crazy-ass things and dragging our innocent granddaughters along to do it. What is wrong with her?”