Diary of a Heretic

Perverted Reality

In April, her ex-husband David jogged across the high-school parking lot to tell her she was getting fat. “Wait up. I don’t mean like fat fat.” His hand loosely circled her upper arm and she yanked it free. “Be careful,” he called. “There’s an obesity epidemic going on.”

When she finally told Freddie she was pregnant, he whooped at such great luck. He smiled his irresistible smile without let up. “A boy! My son!” He lost his suave hotel-manager act and acted like a teenager, pounding her shoulders, slapping her high-five. “Is it okay to tell people? You’re not just playing me, Amanda? We’re getting married and everything?”

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

After phoning his mom and talking to his two younger brothers, Freddie arranged a meeting early the next morning: his family, Amanda, the girls, and him. Then he ordered a bottle of Champagne and finished it off waiting for his friends Rick, Mark, Max, and Brian to arrive. “Party time!”

Amanda swam in the hotel pool with the girls. They showered, watched TV, and slept. Freddie and his friends played poker all night. He woke her in the morning, wondering about a blood test to prove the baby was his. “Mark’s idea. Because, we both used birth control.”

“Do you want to wait, then, before I meet your mom?”

Hell, no. Freddie couldn’t wait. Joyce Berger, a city social worker, pulled Amanda into a cramped, messy kitchen. “You! You’re the answer to my prayers. Now Fred’s got no choice but to grow up.”

After meeting Freddie’s high-school drop-out brothers, Amanda decided to take a slew of blood tests. Not because Freddie and his family worried her genetically. Or, not entirely. But rather, she and Freddie hardly knew each other. He drank too much, dressed too well, and played video games in a trance. A paternity test would resolve his doubts, even if it couldn’t off-set hers. 

Still, she debated marrying him, almost nonstop. Was convention motivating her? The girls? Even if she supposed they might serve as factors, they weren’t good reasons.

Above all, however, Amanda didn’t love Freddie. She loved Walter, who she believed, rationally or not, had consigned her to this fate.

Why was it that Walter said, “Don’t marry Freddie,” more adamantly than he’d ever said, “I love you, Amanda”?

Anytime she complained that he didn’t return her fervor, Walter would say, “But, you know I love you, Amanda. You absolutely know it. So why keep saying it?”

“I don’t know, Walter. Is it really so obvious that it gets boring saying it out loud? Like saying, “Hey, is it hot in here—or what?”

What truly pissed her off was that somehow Walter had instilled inside Amanda the same stupid, backward, self-defeating morals he had chosen as his own. A perspective that perverted reality, and would thwart them forever.

During April, when she didn’t return his voice mails or texts, Walter sent her CDs of Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter and Johnny Hartman recording with John Coltrane. Old people’s music, except that she soared on the every sound, every time. He sent her Shakespeare’s sonnets and beautiful watercolors by a local artist.

In May, when she called, ready to thank him for such wonderful gifts, they started right in fighting. What she saw as ambivalence, he viewed as sensible respect. He would always love her, but they couldn’t deny their past. If they were to move their love into the sexual realm, that transfer demanded reverence. The immeasurable jump from father to daughter--to man to woman.

She sputtered at this. “How do you know what’s a jump and what’s not, since you’ve got us glued to the ground?” Walter just didn’t love her the way she loved him.

“Do you want me to move to Oak Park, Amanda? If you want me to marry you, just say so, and I will.”

“Walter, how many times have we gone over this? You won’t, and you can’t.” She snapped the phone shut.

Walter called back, saying—he would so move there; he would so marry her. He’d buy them a house for five, Walter, Amanda, and three children.

“It’s too late.” She hung up on him and refused to answer his calls. His god-awful patience and “sensible respect” ruined her disposition.

Six months pregnant, she called Walter again. And this time, before saying “Hello,” she picked up on his frustration.

“I love you without restrictions, Amanda. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

“Nothing, Walter. I want nothing. I want you to do nothing.”

“Honey, please. Why are you so angry?”

Good question. She had no idea. But in a tumult of indignation, she drove straight to the hotel. Freddie was drunk, but what else was new. “Guess what?” she took his manicured hand. “The wedding’s on. Next Saturday. No matter what.”

(To be continued)

Sacred Text

Carlos, with yet another totally transforming haircut (clipped close and kept gray), strides through our combined celestial white suites in clothes that cost the earth, cell phone to his now naked ear.

The rooms are glass, floor to ceiling. Altocumulus rows undulate around us. A Mogul for the Ages.  (That’s him.)  Master of the Religion Without Rules  (That’s me.)

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

I sit festooned to an enormous white couch in new white clothes, which Maggie and I bought yesterday.  My pulse beats beneath a silk collar band.  It runs in a searing swath from my navel to my groin.  I can’t swallow.  I can’t breathe.

I’m supposed to be composing the RWR Doctrine.  The meetings have become weird and exhausting.  I go on, say my stuff, people clap and cheer and money rises like mountains.  Except, Carlos contends, not quite enough money;  not at this juncture. “We’ve got to hit big, and follow hard with residuals.”  So my personal trainer and ally, Maggie, sits opposite me, also in new white clothes (involving, as always with her, plenty of deep cleavage), culling “significant concepts” from a file of meeting highlights.  Or that’s what she’s supposed to be doing.  Actually, she’s text-mailing back and forth with Stephanie and Rafe, who are in the middle of a grand opening in Lincoln Park.

Apparently I signed leases and hiring agreements.  “You picked out the floor and ceiling tile with me.  Remember?  And you insisted on a limited menu.  Six kinds of bread, three kinds of donuts. . . ”

Head aching, I send e-mail from my laptop to hers, from the couch to the chair.

I can’t do this!

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maggie says, flipping open a phone, then shutting it and calling Carlos, who’s perpetually on his phone:  “Hey, Carlos, we need to talk.  In the bedroom.”

Hey Maggie—I’m consumed by humiliation, wracked by guilt, filled with dread.

“Don’t be silly,” she says.

I can’t do this!

“Of course you can.  Right, Carlos?”

He swings through the suite, looking super-austere in his luxe tailoring and radically short gray hair.  And as he bends to whisper in my ear, “Just stay focused, Malcolm.  Put down what you think.  What you—”

“I know, I know, I know already!  What I believe.”

“Exactly.”  Hand on my shoulder, Carlos claims he’s within a hair’s breadth of negotiating a publishing deal.  “A best-seller, yes, they get that part, but what’s harder for them to grasp is that first and foremost we’re talking—” he raises an eyebrow, holds up a finger—“sacred text.”

“Ha ha, Carlos.”  I slump deeper into the pillowy silk couch.

“Lighten up, Chuckles.”  He pats my cheek.  “It’s not the end of the world.”

Maggie sighs and bows, motioning for Carlos to follow her into the bedroom.  They mumble furiously for what seems like forever.  At one point Maggie says, “Don’t be such an asshole,” and Carlos snaps, “Keep your voice down.”

(To be continued)

Confusion, Panic, and Remorse

Off stage, a bigger throng than usual pressed in on me.  They clapped and murmured, “Thank you, thank you.”  “Malcolm, Malcolm.”  You’d think I’d get used to it, but no.  The crux of my being is exposed.  It’s grotesque and unseemly, and after a big public spillover, I want to hide in a dark, empty room.  Except last night, upon seeing the boy Tyler, the sadness pooled deeper and deeper, while all the while a wall of hands patted my back and shoulders, head and chest.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Stephanie and her new boyfriend Rafe, Maggie and her trumpet-playing boyfriend Lyle, Louie and his girlfriend, Demetria, Professors Llewlleyn and Smith, the people I knew, clamored for special attention, kisses and handholding.  I noticed Carlos at the top of the staircase.  He mouthed “home run” and shook a loosely formed wrist at waist level, a crude promise of a vulgar reward.  Bitter disgust welled, bringing fresh tears.  Please God, let me find the boy and get him out of here! I kept slogging through the whirlpool, past Shari and Sylvia, Franklin and Fletcher, various erstwhile customers, students, shopkeepers and construction workers, searching for him.

Surely the soul of concern, of sweetness, light, peace, joy, and hope was close.  I could feel him; he was waiting for me but—I could not reach him.  I could not see him.  Tyler was near.  He was here and then—

Too late.

I knew only confusion, panic, and remorse.  Of all the dozens of people vying to touch me, to thrust bouquets of tulips at me, bags of CDs, boxes of chocolate, where was he?

(To be continued)

Squaring the Circle

She wasn’t dreading seeing Walter. She wanted him there beside her, as desperately now as ever. But unlike three weeks ago, she wasn’t anticipating their time together as shimmering and glorious. Not this time.   

Fragile and numb, she lay on the rug, still wearing green slacks and a matching jacket, the one with the scooped neckline and floppy lapels, which she had worn to work. Shoes off, bereft, she closed her eyes while her mind’s infrared twins ran from each other in circles and collided head on.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

When Walter finally rang the doorbell, he did a double-take, similar to the one six months ago. Except this time he didn’t lift her in the air, and kiss her, abandoning everything.  This time, he said, “My God, Amanda, you’re so beautiful, it’s unreal!”

She choked, trying to laugh and took his hand. “I should have bet the bank, Walter. That you’d be stupid and romantic about this.”

“About what?”

She closed the door behind him. He dropped his travel bag and she pulled him to the couch where he held her unbelievably clear, luminous face close to his. He searched her eyes, which were wide and wondering, edging toward bewilderment.

“What’s happened, Amanda?”

Telling him was so hard. She trembled and embarrassing tears dripped down her face and throat before she could get the words out. “I haven’t told the father. Freddie. I’ve only told you.”

His expression combined terrible concern with what looked to her like stunned grief. He wrapped his arms around her and she cried.

“I supposed you’ve ruled out…” Still in his arms she nodded, yes, she’d ruled that out. She started to explain why but he whispered, “It’s okay.” She could explain later.

He blotted her wet face with a handkerchief and kissed her eyelids. “We’ll work something out.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’ve come at this from every direction. We can’t work anything out, Walter. Even though it’s early. Even though I could still change my mind. Which is why the exact reason not to change my mind. It won’t help.”

Walter stared blankly into the room, too worried—too crestfallen—to ask how that made sense. What had he been thinking last summer—insisting they were father and daughter? His desire for her, now that she was thirty-years-old, was pure and absolute. He coaxed her closer to him and touching her, managed to ask: “Well. Do you love the father?”

Amanda hugged her knees, pressing her fingers between her bare toes the way she had when she was a girl. Her voice gave a dismissive laugh. “For me, Walter, there’s you. And then there’s everybody else.”

He stroked her face, and buoyed by what she said, Walter dared to lift her up and settle her supine on the couch. He unbuttoned her little jacket and pressed his palms over her bra-clad breasts, which were unusually warm.

Amanda sighed, “Oh God,” and almost succumbed. But then—no, she couldn’t do this now.

Within the last six months, Walter’s heart had turned upside down. Always before, he refused her. So he had to describe how after that summer, the shameful past had finally receded into the deep past. That when the year brought on winter, he realized how very old he was.

Before her baby was born, Walter would turn fifty-nine years old, but he was still healthy. He had led a hobbled life, but if she truly thought she was in love him, “Well,” he said, “let’s see what happens.”

Amanda climbed into his lap facing him, but shaking her head. “Not now. It’s not too late, I promise. But it can’t happen now.”

They talked all night and all day and held each other, kissed each other, but that’s all. They kept their clothes on. Amanda was convinced that if they tried being lovers when she was pregnant by another man, their love would die. She had waited her whole life for Walter, and given the circumstances, they needed to wait a few more years.

Walter pleaded with her. He had made many terrible mistakes. But how many years was she contemplating? Until he was sixty-five?

“At least one year, maybe two.” If they didn’t wait, if they didn’t let this trick of fate play out, she and Walter were doomed. Even if she didn’t give birth, she would still need time to become purely herself again. She didn’t belong with him until this phase had passed. Until, three children or not, she was free. 

Walter refused to understand anything except that he’d wasted his life. Or most of it.

Before leaving Oak Park, Walter stopped at the hotel. Naturally, Freddie bought him a drink, and two for himself.

Driving to the airport, he phoned Amanda. “Don’t marry him.” She should only marry someone she couldn’t stand not marrying. But under no circumstances should she marry Freddie.

And God knows, she really and truly shouldn’t have.

(To be continued.)

Oh So Close

Walter invited Amanda to Australia for Christmas. “Didn’t you say Evie and DeeDee were going skiing with Mike and his parents?” He knew Amanda and her mother no longer spoke. “So it would be just us visiting Olivia in Brisbane.”

“Really.” Amanda clung to the kitchen counter as her mind spun madly around in a hammock. “Walter, are you sure?”

“What do you mean, am I sure?”

“You and me traveling to the other side of the earth? Just you and me. No Evie or DeeDee.” A line of energy shot through her.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Yes, honey, I’m sure. And yes, of course, it scares me. But I’ve done all I can do. Olivia invited both of us. We’ll see what happens.”

Now the charge was circulating through her whole body.  “Can I meet you in New York? We’ll fly together from there?”

“I’ll call you in a few days with an itinerary.”

For thirty-six hours her pulse beat so furiously she couldn’t sleep or eat. If Walter loved her the way she wanted him to, which was all she had ever wanted—Amanda would be transformed. Every thought and gesture, every sorrow and every joy would sing with layers of new meaning.

Now, she was scared. Possibility burned through her with such intensity she was sure she would die before she and Walter ever got on a jet together, seated side by side for 24 hours, flying 30,000 ft. into the atmosphere at 500 m.p.h.

Then Olivia phoned. Her mother was demanding Olivia come to the states for Christmas. Sterling hadn’t seen Olivia in two years. And Sterling and her second husband refused to travel. They couldn’t leave their horses. Or their boat. 

Olivia said, “So after seeing them, I’m spending Christmas with Daddy. You should be there, too, Amanda.”

A secret part of her wasn’t surprised. If it were possible to know anything ahead of time, Amanda had known something like this was bound to happen.

“Another year, O. I was going to tell Walter; I can’t get away.”

Walter called an hour later. “We can still go someplace, Amanda. Just you and me. Some other time.”

“We’ll see,” she said, too disappointed to think beyond the next minute. He was saying he loved her and hanging up, when she asked if he’d come in January, MLK weekend.

“Evie and DeeDee will be here, but they love you, too.”

“Yes, of course. Or, maybe you can trade weekends with Mike. That is, if you want.”

She didn’t want anything anymore. That’s what she thought. The only thing she had ever wanted was impossible. Time to stop hoping; time to get real.

Christmas Eve Amanda and Freddie Berger danced in the hotel’s ballroom till dawn. Freddie could drink all night with nary a stumble or hiccup. They slept in the penthouse suite. She used birth control. He used birth control.

But by the New Year’s Eve party, Amanda recognized a tenderness she’d experienced just twice before. At the hotel’s New Year’s Eve party, she danced and sang to celebrate. But she didn’t drink Champagne. Her intuition said, better not.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Husband Number Three

Walter telephoned the Friday after Thanksgiving, thanking Amanda. Almost immediately, they argued inside the same old spirals formed of opposing, impossible hopes. Finally, Walter asked Amanda a favor. Michelle had left a valuable pink pearl earring in the hotel room, probably on the night-table. 

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Well then. Why don’t I drive over there and ask the hotel manager?” Amanda dug her fingernails into her forearm. She didn’t care one whit about Michelle and rejected any notion that Walter did either.

“I appreciate it, honey.”

“Just promise me that if it’s not at the hotel, you won’t buy her replacement earrings.”

Freddie Berger, the hotel manager, affected suave mannerisms possibly, Amanda thought, to match establishment’s 1920s period style. He greeted her with a slight bow, his dark curls falling over a narrow forehead. He pressed her hand within his warm, strong, well-manicured grasp. She pulled back, but his blue eyes assured her: his act was just for fun. His bespoke suit and expensive shoes and tie worked like props. His sly, ebullient grin, so mischievous, telegraphed that he delighted in nothing so much as relieving her—or anyone’s—distress. “Give me five, maybe ten minutes, to find the earring. Do you know the room number?”

Amanda didn’t, but Walter’s name answered that. Freddie tapped at a keyboard and adjusted an earpiece before requesting Nancy meet him in the back office.

Amanda was studying the lobby’s main sculpture when Freddie tapped her shoulder. She turned, somewhat surprised as he emptied a small satin pouch into her hand. “Is this it?” 

Amanda nodded; it matched Walter’s description, anyway.

With a wider, more sincere grin that he clearly intended to come across as irresistible, Freddie insisted on buying Amanda a drink. “To make up for the anxiety.” He lowered his arms and shrugged. A paltry excuse, but hey, they were riding the tail of a holiday weekend, and it was almost dark outside. “Why the hell not?”

She hesitated for real, not bluffing, but he firmly issued her inside the hotel’s soft-lit restaurant. “We just stocked an excellent Pinot Grigio.”

After pulling out her chair and moving quite close to her, he laid his smooth hands and immaculate shirt cuffs on the edge of their small, gleaming little table. “Unless you prefer Champagne.”

She laughed. “Champagne? You always treat relatives retrieving lost stuff like this?”

“No one remotely like you has ever inquired about a pink pearl earring.”

She sipped white wine and Freddie, who when it came down to it changed his mind and ordered a double Boodles martini, assured her he wasn’t married, and didn’t have a girlfriend. “What about you?”

Amanda admitted she was filing for a second divorce. “The first marriage, though, wasn’t really a mistake. It lasted ten years and gave me two amazing little girls. So what if Mike changed from this cool, happy guy, into a big, dumb slob, and now into a self-righteous Episcopalian? He’s a decent father.” 

“You were married for ten years?” Freddie asked. “What, were you in high school?”

“Just starting college.”

“And now?”

“I work for the school district and turn thirty-one in April.”

Freddie was twenty-eight and asked her to dinner next Friday. Amanda said, “Okay. If I can schedule it.”

A few minutes later, outside her house, she phoned Walter from her car.

“You’re kidding. I wasn’t totally convinced Michelle had even lost an earring,” he said.

Amanda let that go; that’s how anxious she was about Freddie. “Um, Walter. The hotel manager asked me out to dinner. Next Friday.”

“And you’re asking for parental permission?”

Shit. She bit her lip. “I’m just mentioning it.”

“Amanda,” he couldn’t help pleading, “please, don’t marry this guy on a whim. Don’t marry him until I can meet him.”

“It’s one date, Walter. I’ve made two mistakes; I’m not going to make another. Besides, David’s stalling out of spite. I couldn’t get married again if I tried.”

“Amanda, honey.” he said her name in a way that declared no one else should say her name. “Amanda.” No one else, ever. Walter alone knew who she was.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Ipso Facto Sexual

I saw him!  At the Amphitheater tonight, in mid-performance, I pivoted, my arm swooping down, my voice rising, “You have to admit how you feel!  You have to risk making mistakes and be prepared to pay for them,” and there he was, his beautiful young face shining out from the dim and bobbling masses.  Oh!  If only I’d acted on my words!  How I feel, what I want!  Why didn’t I jump down, walk arms outstretched to where he sat, and implore him?  Come with me!

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Instead, I fluttered up there.  Shuddered, staggered, raked my hands through my hair and mopped my face with my billowy sleeve.  “Forget sexual denial,” I yelled, suddenly full of ire.  “The nonsexual ideal is a lie!  Banning sex leads not to enlightenment, not to purity, but to seething resentment and bitterest intolerance.  Do not let the self-righteous and their festering superstitions oppress you!”

I could no longer see Tyler, but knowing he was there my voice sounded naked, my words indulgent and idiotically emphatic. “They object to people having sex because they’re squeamish.  And so I’m asking, isn’t total preoccupation with abstinence just as vulgar as it’s opposite? 

“Whatever you categorically deny yourself categorically rules you. These guys are obsessed with sex.  To where they just can’t fathom that sex is not the only thing.

“Or wait—wait a minute.  Maybe. . . now that I mention it. . . maybe sex is the only thing.  Maybe whatever you want more than anything, so that you get sick if you have to go without it—whatever it is that drives you, that directs your every endeavor in life—that thing is, for you, tantamount to sex.”

Hitting a low note, I inadvertently let my stomach out and loosened the sash.  Drawing myself up, up—Tyler was out there—I knotted it for all to see.  I smiled (See, I’m human), and even gaily said, “There, now it won’t come undone.”

And, “As I was saying:  If an experience such as eating an éclair, waking in a tub of tepid water, or getting stung by a bee reaches a certain intensity, a certain ratio of pleasure to pain, involving your entire consciousness, it is ipso facto sexual.  But if it somehow goes further than that, beyond the sexual, beyond the personal, it becomes a spiritual experience.”

At the word “spiritual,” I rose higher, the light that surrounds me on stage glowing warmer, milkier.  I reached out my hands as if to touch the boy’s supernaturally beautiful face, gazing luminously, gloriously up at me, from five rows in, two seats left of center.
“In which case, maybe those fundamentalists,” I spoke directly to him, “proscribe sex because it looks—and sometimes, though how would they know, even feels—so much like prayer.

“Not that sex is always pleasurable.  I mean, we’ve all had our hideous realizations—what have we done?  We think something’s going to be great and it turns out stupid and dull.  We’re dull and stupid—we’re fakes.”

I wanted Tyler to know:  this magnetism is temporary.  A vaudeville number, a spiel, a performance.  It’s not me, really.  “I am just like you,” I said, and instantly realized my mistake.  “I am just like you.  We are the same.  Not different.”  And—

Shit.  I didn’t need to look.  I already knew:  He was still there but gone from my field of vision.  I was aware of him listening, but the brilliant face, so miraculously clear among the blur of anonymous heads, winked and went out, became in the blink of an eye another dot in one of the endless rows of amorphous bliss.

I am just like you. Why did I speak the words in my mouth instead of my heart?  I bowed and turned—and when I looked up, he’d become invisible.  The crowd was a sea of faces, a field of spots against the all-encompassing darkness.

“So okay, maybe I can imagine how total abstinence might look like the shortest, surest path to holiness. . . ”  I blah, blah, blahhed.

Why didn’t I go to him, take his hand, and lead him away to someplace safe and secluded?  What if I missed my only chance; there’s no going back?

Angry and scared—of myself and the boy Tyler, and of my past and bungled present—I veered off track.  My powers abandoned me; the magic evaporated.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Pull It Up or Pull It Down?

Ten days later and I am still indifferent to Carlos.  In fact I am indifferent to everyone and -thing except:  one hopelessly unrealistic hope.  For ever since my sweet, quickening encounter with the beautiful boy Tyler, when he so innocently and sincerely asked, did I mind?  (Did I mind if he and his friends smoked dope on my time?)  I can think of nothing else!  Every three seconds he’s back, the soul of concern, of sweetness, light, peace, joy and hope, swaying politely in front of me, Blunt in hand.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

I can not concentrate.   I can not eat or sleep, I’m so fixated on that tool belt that seems to be wearing him more than he’s wearing it.  In my mind it’s slowly sliding off of him, and I can’t decide which I want more:  to pull it up or down.

Tyler, Tyler, Tyler! If anything else matters, I don’t care.  Or remember.

(To be continued)

Lover Boy

Walter and Amanda kept fighting about the joint bank account he’d set aside for her. The argument dominated the rest of the vacation without quite ruining it.

They still enjoyed hikes with Evie and DeeDee. The girls learned to fish and Evie relished gutting their catch. They canoed, explored little islands, and discovered various birds and plants. They listened to music—Amanda was amazed that Walter liked jazz and blues probably better than David.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Why didn’t you play your CDs for me when I was young?”

“I wasn’t trying to educate you, Amanda. So, we listened to middle-school music.”

Yet, more anger surfaced than Amanda had experienced with either of her ex-husbands. And, Walter told her that he had never faced this much antagonism: not when his ex-wife Sterling ran off with another man; not when she took Olivia from him; not even in prison, where he had quietly withstood a vicious climate.

“You’re saying I’m worse than prison? Is that why you insist on living inside a cage?”

When Amanda came up with that barb, Walter stalked off. Later he said, “If you understood what you’re asking of me, you’d never ask it, Amanda.”

“Oh yeah? You’re asking me to take your money upfront so that if I ever seduce you, I’m a whore.”

For this and similar accusations, she apologized several times a day.

When the week ended, he drove Amanda and the girls, who happily called him “Grandpa,” to the airport. He kissed Evie and DeeDee good-bye. And banking on it serving as mere custom, he kissed Amanda, too. Without warning, though, the little gesture generated a heat that staggered and excited them both. Leaving Walter worried and guilty.

Before passing through security, Amanda invited him for Thanksgiving, “Bring Olivia,” she called.

But five months later, in November, Olivia was still in Australia, with no intention of returning soon. On the phone, Walter asked, “Can I bring a friend, instead? Michelle?”

“Michelle?” Amanda’s heart raced and the room spun. “Of course, Walter. I’ll make hotel reservations.”

No, he’d do that. Amanda spent three weeks conjuring up exactly what Michelle looked like, how she talked and walked, and how she doted on Walter, who was his same age.

She was a tax lawyer, that’s how she and Walter had met. At fifty-eight, Michelle’s face was unlined and taut. Like Amanda’s mother, Cheryl, Michelle swanned around on fabulously high heels. She fixed her blonde hair in a classic French twist and wore gorgeous, white suits embroidered with metallic thread. But her clothes—Amanda doubted it was just fashion—looked a size too small. 

She adored Hemingway and was thrilled by the hotel touting his name. She didn’t think they’d have time for house tours, though. “So I guess we’ll have to come back.” Her giggle sounded to Amanda like fingernails on a blackboard.

When she met Evie and DeeDee, Michelle smacked her forehead, giggling at the old joke, “Guess I forgot to have children.”

Amanda, who’d never heard the line, said, “No woman should feel compelled, Michelle. It’s a serious choice either way.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Michelle grabbed Walter’s waist. “Don’t you agree, lover-boy?”

Amanda turned away fast but not before her eyes rolled.   

When Evie whooped, begging for a whopping-big piece of pie, Michelle, who sat at the opposite end of the table, shook her head. “What happened to your inside voice?”

Amanda almost spoke up, but Evie was already saying, “I’m ten years old, Michelle. ‘Inside voices’ are for toddlers.”

“You’re right, Evie,” Amanda said. “But if you’ll keep your voice down, you can have as much pie as you want.”

“Tell me you don’t encourage your girls to overeat.”

Walter excused himself and went outside without a jacket, despite the cold.

Amanda was seeking a proper comeback, when naturally, skinny Evie eyed Michelle rudely. “Well, at least I’m not busting out of my dress.”

“Go to your room, Evie. You can have dessert later.”

DeeDee, who was not skinny, tossed her napkin on her plate. “Count me outta here.” 

Amanda followed. “Excuse me, Michelle.” But instead of talking to her daughters as she had intended, Amanda joined Walter outside, where he was now sitting on the curb, smoking a cigarette.

“Walter, I’m shocked!” Amanda pulled him up and they searched each other’s eyes a second before he finally grimaced, half-grin, half in pain.

“Yeah. Well, I’ll quit after the weekend.”

“Did you tell Michelle about us?”

“No. I can only stand so much fun, Amanda. As you well know.”

(To Be Continued.)

Bad Girl

Amanda cried in the dirt, dozed a while, and woke, her eyes stinging and her face sore. This time she’d scraped and rubbed herself so she hurt all over. Afternoon light softened the air as she brushed away dirt and dead leaves. The rented bicycle included a water bottle and she splashed some of it on her face and legs.

What was she going to do? It had to be bad. Really bad.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

But not permanent. Amanda would never ride the bike straight into an oncoming car, for example. She wasn’t a fool. Having suffered periodic abandonment as a child, she’d never leave her girls motherless. She had devoted everything to them but for a few hours here or there, and she wasn’t going to toss that away, because of a temporary need, no matter how urgent, to be a terrible girl. A stupid punk girl Walter must punish.

Last September, in her backyard, her friend Farrah was smoking a cigarette and cursing every sleaze ball she’d ever loved. Which was everyone she’d ever loved. Amanda had no idea Farrah smoked. The rest, of course. But smoking?

“I’ll quit in a few months,” Farrah had said. “But right now? I need this. Actually, I need a lot more, but this is what’s readily available.”

Amanda rode the bicycle into the village and rolled the bike right into the Stewart’s convenience store, having forgotten the lock. At the counter, she bought a pack of Seneca 100s, because at $6.99, they were the least expensive. She sat on a picnic table next to the parking lot and coughed and gasped and coughed, pounding the table, through two cigarettes. She had smoked tobacco before, mixed in with pot. But straight up? The stuff was vile. Half-way through the third one, she gave up and raced back to the house, scraped, dirty, and nauseated.

Walter was reading on the back porch and Evie and DeeDee were watching a Hannah Montana DVD that Amanda remembered Walter once buying for her.

Hearing her voice, Walter bounded inside. The screen slammed behind him. She could see he had worried. But he said nothing. Just: “Did you ride through the village?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was fun.” What was more fun, however, was backing away from him as he closed in on her, concerned and upset.

“Amanda, come with me. Let’s check out the bicycle you rode. Evie, DeeDee, we’ll be in front. After the show’s over, we’ll hike to the inlet.”   

He pulled Amanda out onto the front porch and hissed in her ear. “Did you suck down a whole pack? Because you reek.”

She stepped backward and grinned. “Aha, that’s more like it. Father and daughter wise.”

“Don’t be stupid, Amanda. I told you it’s not easy for me, either.”

“Well then what about a good, hard spanking?”

He shook his head and groaned. “That’s really not funny.”

On the ample front porch, Amanda pushed back and forth on a glider. Painted white, it was springy and stable. She hadn’t noticed it before; and now, here it was, so she could glide and giggle and stare up at Walter’s wishful, ridiculous resolve.

He was pacing in front of her. “There’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, but wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Until Olivia’s wedding, I was afraid to approach you. But this was her idea—that I legally adopt you.”

“No shit.”

“It might help,” he said. “If we simply respected the boundaries set up by law.”

“Do they let kidnappers adopt their victims, even decades afterwards?”

He scooted next to her on the gliding swing and let her push while he studied his hands, whispering, again. “Let me look into it. The case against me was serious but de facto. No one charged me with an intention to harm you sexually or otherwise. They have statutes for this.”

“Still, why get into it? Just for some papers. You’re my father; I’m your daughter. I got that, Walter. Don’t worry.”

“Years ago, I set up a bank account for you. Just like Olivia’s, which she cleans out the day the check clears. Yours, since you’ve never even know about it, has accrued over the years. All you need to do is sign a few papers.”

(Click here to read the next episode)