Upside Down (5 page)

After th
e bath, I was almost feeling like my old self again. I went to the kitchen, prepared a salad, poured a glass of wine and sat at the counter to eat my dinner. The phone rang halfway through the meal. I checked the number, sighed and rolled my eyes before picking it up.

“Hey, mom, how are you doing?”

“Hi, hon. It’s been ages since we last talked. I miss you. Are you all right?”

“
Yes, I’m great. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I’ve been working longer hours than usual. How are you? Is dad feeling better?’

“Oh, you know your father!
” she sighed and I went to the living room to get comfortable because I knew it was going to be a long call. “He thinks all doctors are charlatans. I have the hardest time convincing him to take his medication.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, mom. He listens to you,”
I replied, ignoring the bait she had thrown me.

If she wanted me
to talk to my father, she would have to say it clearly. My mother had played those little games all my life. She seldom asked me anything directly, then, when I got angry and accused her of trying to manipulate me, she would be offended and say she didn’t know how to talk to me because she didn’t know her own daughter anymore. The problem with that speech of hers was that she had never known me in the first place. But, I didn’t want to argue with her, then. I had too many real problems to solve.

“Well, sometimes he
does, sometimes he ignores me,” she paused for a while but continued her story when I didn’t say anything else. “Anyway, I called to tell you he will need to undergo surgery. The doctors have told us the cancer has reappeared. In his lungs, this time. They said chemotherapy isn’t the best option; not before the surgery, anyway.”

“Have you gotten a second opinion?”

“We’ve been to four doctors so far. They all said the exact same thing.”

“Have they
already set a date?”

“As soon as
we manage to convince you father to do it.”

“What do you mean? He doesn’t want surgery?
I know dad is stubborn but it’s his health we’re talking about here, for Christ’s sake. How will he survive without treatment?”

“My words, exactly. But he told me he
wants to look into other options before deciding.”

“Mom, h
e has never needed surgery before. I understand he must be scared but what other options are there? What’s he talking about?”

“I think he’s losing his mind and that’s what I told him because he said
his ancestors were Salem witches who knew everything about healing potions and stuff like that. Now, he’s talking about going there, to Salem, looking for this kind of treatment.”

“
I didn’t know we had had witches in the family
.” I thought to myself before realizing that wasn’t the important issue at all and that my mother was expecting some kind of reaction from me, other than silence.

“Mom, I’m speechless. The whole idea is so outrageous
I don’t know what to say to you.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other
side of the line and I thought I heard my mother sniffing. I rolled my eyes again.

“
I don’t know what else to do, honey,” she broke off and her voice sounded very weak when she managed to speak again. Her Louisiana accent was heavier probably because of her distress. “If anything happens to your father, I won’t be able to go on alone.”

She was sobbing now and I froze on
my side of the line, not knowing what to say or how to deal with her when she sounded so fragile and hurt. I had never understood my mother’s complete devotion to my father. The few times I had asked her about it, she told me it was love. It looked a lot like low self-esteem mixed with total dependence to me. I’ve always had very little tolerance for weak people. I forced myself to say something. Anything.

“
Mom, nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“How can you know that? You haven’t seen your father, or me, in over a year!”

I sighed and braced myself for the recriminations I knew would follow. To my surprise, my mother paused and I heard her taking a deep breath.

“I don’t want
to fight with you, Carol Anne,” the hurt sounded real but I knew my mother better. “Not now that your father needs us to stick together. You’re the only family we have.”

Bingo! She had changed
her tactics but trying to guilt me was still her favorite weapon. And it worked like it had always worked before.

“I don’t want to fight either, mom.
Do you want me to come up and talk to him?” more eye-rolling. I was starting to feel dizzy.

“Honey, I don’t want to take
you off your work. You said you’ve been busy.”

“
Gosh, don’t you read the newspaper? Don’t you know what’s going on outside your high walls
?” I wanted to shout into the phone. Instead, I said what she wanted to hear. “I’ll make the time, mom, don’t worry. Tomorrow is Friday and I have an important client coming to my office for a meeting at the end of the day. I’ll be too tired to drive. Is Saturday ok?”

“Saturday is perfect, dear. Can you stay the night?”

I thought that if I rolled my eyes one more time, they would get stuck. So, I controlled the urge to do that. Barely.

“Yes, mom, of course I can.”

“Great. I’ll tell your father you’re coming. He’ll be so thrilled.”

“Me, too. Talk to you then.”

“Drive safely, honey,” she hesitated and I almost hung up but I stopped when I heard her voice again. It was little more than a whisper. “Thank you, sweetie. It means a lot to me.”

“
It’s no big deal, mom. Stop worrying. Everything will be fine,” I had trouble speaking because my throat was tight but I meant the words this time. “Goodbye, mom.”

“Bye, Carol Anne.”

I put the phone down and sat there staring at it as realization dawned on me. Not for the first time in my life, I had to face the fact that my parents were mortal people just like everyone else. More than ten years ago, my father had been diagnosed with cancer. He had undergone extensive treatment and he was apparently in remission. I had faced the possibility of losing him back then and it had been tough but I must have been living in denial since. Facing a parent’s death, or the possibility of their death, forces a person to face their own mortality. I hadn’t been ready for that ten years earlier and I surely was not ready then. I stood up and went to bed.

“I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

* * * *

In the middle of the night, I sat up on the bed, gasping and sweating. I opened my eyes wide and looked around unable to tell the difference between dream and reality, still feeling hands pressing my face down, legs immobilizing me and a body pressing hard on me from behind. I put a hand on my throat as if I could calm my wild heartbeats with that gesture. I couldn’t, though. I reached over for the thermos bottle on the nightstand and took a sip of water from it. The refreshing feeling soothed my parched throat and dried lips. I lay down again, threw one arm over my closed eyes and sighed.

“
God, these dreams have got to stop or I’ll go crazy.”

I tried to go back to sleep but
disturbing flashes from that last dream kept popping up in my head. I had never been more scared in my life – sleeping or awake. I had been having strange dreams over those last few days. I wasn’t able to remember them in details and what little I did remember was confusing. At first, the dreams were some kind of foreplay leading to a sexual scene. Although the situations weren’t clear, as so often happens in dreams, I remembered feeling attracted to somebody, then being teased by this person and getting excited by what seemed to be a naughty game of hide-and-seek.

In th
ose dreams, I would never see the person clearly. I saw only a profile, or an arm, or a leg, or a mouth. Always in close-ups which made it hard to see enough of the person to identify them. The dreams had escalated and I would feel a hand touching me or lips kissing my cheek or my neck. Gradually, the scenes got more intense and the touching got rougher. But still, I couldn’t see who was groping me. Until that night, at least. That last dream had been the most violent one and the first one in which I saw my attacker. But it made no sense at all. In that last dream, I had been sexually attacked by the last person who could ever have done anything like that to me. How could a woman force herself on another one like that? And more importantly, how could a sweet, gentle person such as Cindy O’Rourke be so ruthless?

“I am going nuts
! All this is absurd!” I chided myself. “I’m feeling burnt-out. I’ve been stressed out over the economical situation for quite some time. Today, I found out about my dad and snapped. That’s got to be it.”

I turned over to lie on my stomach
, stretched my arms out and buried my head in the pillows. I fell asleep again but there were no dreams that time.

* * * *

The next day started like any other day until I got out of the common elevator on my office’s floor and saw Cindy standing behind the counter talking to a delivery man. She seemed so easygoing, chatting away with the handsome young man that I felt ashamed for having had that crazy dream. She looked up, gave me one of her bright smiles and waved a manila envelope in the air.

“Ms. Sullivan, good morning
! This has just arrived for you. Steve here said it’s urgent,” she extended the smile to the delivery man named Steve who only managed to grin back at her, eyes glued to her face.

I grabbed the thick envelope and recognized
a big client’s logo on it.

“Thank you, Ms. O’Rourke. That’s indeed urgent. I’ll
take it myself.”

“You’re very welcome,” she giggled
, winked and turned back to sign the delivery log as she resumed talking to Steve.

I shook my head and tried not to feel too guilty about the
damn dream. Dreams are not supposed to make sense, right? They are unreal, they are exactly that – dreams. So what? She is a nice, lively young girl and all that. I shouldn’t feel bad about things I couldn’t control. I squared my shoulders and stopped by Mark’s desk.

“Good morning, Mark. Here’s the information we had been waiting for. It’ll help us a lot with that
meeting later. Come to my office when you have some time and we’ll go over the presentation again.”

“I’m free now,” he answered and stood up immediately to follow me in.
We closed the door behind us and I didn’t have a second to spare thinking about enigmatic dreams or sick parents or new employees for the rest of the day.

As soon as the meeting was over,
I called Mark to my office.

“
Close the door.”

I was leaning
against my desk, facing the door. He closed it and came to stand before me.

“
Can you be at my place around eight tonight?”

“Sure thing
,” he folded his arms behind my back in a loose embrace.

“Excellent.”

“Do you want me to bring anything? Wine, maybe?”

“No, d
on’t worry about anything, pet,” I ran my hands up his chest, tweaked his nipple over his silk shirt and smiled when he winced. “Just bring your good-looking self and we’ll be fine.”

“You know, I still haven’t recovered from that elevator ride yesterday,” he
pushed his lower body against mine.

My grin widened
when I felt his hardness and I grabbed him by his hair to kiss him hard and long.

“Mark, my dear, you
are amazing,” I whispered in his ear when I pulled away from the kiss. “But I doubt you’ve been that turned on since yesterday.”

“Of course, not,” he laughed
, kissing my neck. “Only when you were around.”

“Even during that
last, endless meeting?”

“More than
any other time,” he chuckled in my ear as he nibbled at my ear lobe.

It was my
turn to moan.

“
We need to stop this right now or we’ll never get to dinner,” I pulled away but he kept his hands on my waist.

“Would it be so bad?”

“I want to cook something special for you tonight, Mark. You know I love cooking but it’s not fun cooking for only one person.”

“
Oh, well, what can I say? I think it’s official, then,” he put a hand over his forehead in a fake dramatic gesture as he winked at me. “You’re one more woman, in a long list, to fall prey to my irresistible charms. Today, you want to cook; next thing you know, you’ll be crawling after me, begging for my attention.”

“In your dreams, my boy
.”

I escaped his embrace
, laughing, because I knew he was making fun of himself. He had an athletic, hot body but he was not conceit at all. On the contrary, he was a generous lover who always made sure I was having as much fun as he was, if not more than he was.