Monsoon Season (17 page)

I’d cocked my eyebrow at him and shrugged. Why not? It surprised him, I could tell. But he didn’t blink. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he carried me through the glass doors, sat down on the lounge chair and pushed my already soaking wet hair out of my eyes. Monsoon rain isn’t like other rain. It’s bigger, louder, wetter somehow. I fucked him right there, my knees digging into the metal on the sides of the chair, rain pouring down my breasts and into his mouth.

‘I remember everything, Ben. I remember the taste of blood in my mouth when you hit me.’

‘Riley, I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry! How can I get you to forgive me?’ He noticed me jump a bit as he raised his voice. He paused, regrouped. ‘It wasn’t always bad. That’s all I’m saying. There were good times. I mean, can’t you remember that there were good times? It was mostly good, Riley. It was. Admit it.’

He sounded like a seven-year-old trying to win an argument.

I walked a few steps away, dragging my fingers through my hair. Then I turned back. ‘Monsoon season is what makes you so dangerous to me. If it was always bad, if you were always beating the shit out of me, I would have been able to get away a lot sooner.’

He sat down on the stone wall that ran along the side of the road. He was quiet, his shoulders slumped, defeated.

I sat down next to him and tried to remember what I’d been telling myself all these weeks. ‘We aren’t good for each other, Ben. Too much shit has happened between us. It could never be good again. We need to let each other go.’

That was when he started crying. ‘How can you say that to me, Riley? We fit together.’

That felt true. It made my chest ache, and all the arguments I’d built to the contrary, like bricks in a wall, started to tip and slide.

‘We need each other,’ he insisted. ‘I need you!’

It felt weird to sit there and watch him cry without holding him. But I didn’t want to confuse things. I tucked my hands under my thighs and watched my feet swinging back and forth, my heels hitting the stone wall. ‘You don’t need me,’ I told him. ‘You just think you do. I thought that getting over you would be the hardest thing I ever did, but I’ve done harder things since then. You can do it, too.’

He looked at me, his eyebrows diving toward each other, sneering. ‘So you’re over me? You don’t love me any more? Is that what you’re saying?’

I held my breath for a moment. The truth didn’t matter. ‘Yes. I guess that’s what I’m saying.’

He flinched. His jaw fell loose and he stared at me with his mouth open. He hadn’t been expecting me to say that. He got to his feet and turned away. ‘You’ll never find anyone who loves you the way I do,’ he spat.

I thought about that. ‘Well, I hope you’re right,’ I said simply.

He turned back. ‘So you’re just going to be mad at me for ever?’

‘I’m not really mad any more. I’m just finished.’

‘You’re just finished? You’re just finished.’ He shook his head and smiled, but it was not a smile. ‘You’re such a bitch.’

I got to my feet and started walking back to the house.

‘Where are you going? I’m not
finished
yet,’ he called after me.

I turned around. ‘Can you please be quiet?’ I begged, looking over my shoulder. Through the trees, I could see my father lathering the hood of his car.

‘Oh, are you afraid
Daddy
might hear me?’

‘Can we not do this, Ben?’ I walked backwards. ‘Why are we doing this?’

He took several steps forward. ‘You think the world revolves around you and what you want.’

‘What?’ I could tell there was no calming him down now.

‘You think you can just leave me without a word. You just run away. You get an abortion without even asking me!’

‘Asking you? Ben, go home.’ I turned and walked quickly away from him. I heard his footsteps on the pavement close behind me.

I passed his car at the end of the driveway and slowed down. I thought my father’s presence might be enough to convince Ben to leave quietly. It was my last hope. It was another case of poor judgement.

‘You killed our baby!’ Ben screamed.

I stopped halfway down the driveway. I was staring at my sneakers, but I could feel my father stop what he was doing, heard the soft splash of the sponge as it dropped into the soapy water bucket.

I turned to face Ben. It was better than the alternative. ‘Get the hell out of here!’ I hissed. I felt like he’d stripped me naked in the front yard.

Ben stumbled toward me and fell to his knees, grabbing my waist. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ He was crying again. ‘But if I can forgive you, why can’t you forgive me?’

My father kicked up the gravel on his way toward us. I was prying Ben’s fingers from my belt loops when my father grabbed him by the upper arm and threw him back. ‘Get your hands off my daughter,’ he said, as he stepped between Ben and me.

Ben sprawled in the driveway, looking scared and surprised. ‘I believe she’s asked you to leave.’

Ben scrambled to his feet, mumbling something unintelligible as he walked to his car. He paused before opening the car door, looked at me, sneered and shook his head.

‘Keep moving,’ my father said, taking a step forward.

Ben smacked the heel of his hand against the roof of the car, dug his keys out of his pocket and climbed in. The engine revved as he glared at me through the windshield. And then he was gone.

I couldn’t look my father in the eyes. He walked to the edge of the house and bent to turn the faucet on.

‘Dad, I—’ I didn’t know how to explain.

‘Why don’t you go check on your mother? Make sure this nonsense didn’t wake her up.’

I wrapped my arms around my body, shivering in the afternoon sun.

‘I’ll be inside in a bit,’ he said, picking up the hose.

‘Okay,’ I said, and went into the house.

When Carol was six years old, she had crouched at the bottom of the basement stairs, snickering with anticipation. Her mother flipped the light switch on and each step groaned as she got closer to the bottom. When both of her feet were on the basement floor, Carol sprang into the air. ‘Boo!’ she exclaimed, beaming, gleeful.

Her mother shrieked. Her hands flew up in the air and she stumbled backward, sitting on the second to last step.

‘That wasn’t funny at all!’ she told her daughter, pressing her right hand over her chest. ‘I almost fainted dead away.’

Carol was horrified. She had nearly killed her mother.

When Carol was nine, she and her brother found a set of monogrammed luggage in the basement. The initials were confusing: A.G. Carol’s mother’s name was Anne Riley; her maiden name had been Mathews.

Carol’s brother trudged up the stairs with a pale blue suitcase. Their mother was cleaning the stove in a dress and apron. She turned her head as they came up the stairs; didn’t even give them a chance to ask about the luggage.

‘What are you doing with that?’ She wiped her hands on the apron, near the pockets. She snatched the suitcase from her son’s hand.

The children stepped back, wide-eyed, mute.

‘I don’t want you nosing through my things!’ she yelled, tears flying off her cheeks. ‘Go to your rooms, both of you!’ She left them standing there as she ran down the basement stairs, suitcase in hand. They went to their rooms and they didn’t bring it up ever again.

When Carol was sixteen, she was desperate for a two-piece bathing suit. Her mother put her foot down; she forbade it. She said only tramps would bare their navel to a beach full of boys who were after only one thing. A girl like that could get into trouble.

They went bathing-suit shopping at the Woburn Mall. Carol tried on cartfuls of one-piece bathing suits, pouting into the three-way mirror as her white-cotton underwear spilled out of the leg holes. Her mother stood behind her with a hand on her hip, a smile that faded with the passing of the summer day spent under artificial lights. Carol found what she wanted in Jordan Marsh. It was powder blue, tied behind the neck, with two foam pads in the top. It was a two-piece, but it came up high enough to cover her navel. Her mother relented.

Mark and Carol would sit in the sand dunes on hot summer nights, watching the sun set. Then they would kiss, lying in the sand, hidden by the tall grass. The sand was rough and itchy on their legs. Their kisses were slow and uncertain. He never touched her breasts or moved his hands from the respectful safety of her waist. The few inches of flesh between Carol’s belly button and her ribs were new to the breeze, to the sun, to the touch of another person. The feel of his naked, hairless boy chest against her bare skin was dizzying.

Carol’s mother liked to tell her that Mark was going to break her heart. For two years she cautioned and Carol slammed doors. She stopped telling her anything at all about Mark. Her mother read her diary so she started filling it with hatred for her.

And then she died. She had a brain aneurysm while she was doing the laundry. Carol found her in the basement after school one day, lying on the cool cement floor. She looked like she’d decided to take a nap there. The only sign that something was truly amiss was the laundry basket, turned over on its side, haemorrhaging whites. Her mother’s death smelt like Tide.

Mark asked Carol to marry him in the parking lot of a Rite Aid. They had just finished watching a double feature at the drive-in and had some time to kill before she had to be home. After her mother’s death, Carol’s curfew relaxed significantly. Her father ate his dinner and went to bed early. He didn’t wait up. He didn’t ask where she was going, who with, when she’d be back. That had been her mother’s job and he didn’t seem to have any desire to take over.

Mark and Carol sat close in the front seat of his father’s car. His arm was around her shoulders; she rested her head on his chest. Her heart beat twice for every one of his.

‘Do you have any secrets?’ she asked, walking two fingers up his arm.

He squinted through the windshield and scrunched up his nose. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

‘Yeah, me neither.’ Carol let out a giggle and he turned his face to her, looking concerned, as if to say,
What’s so funny?
She shrugged. ‘We’re so boring and we’re not even married yet.’

‘Well, we can fix that,’ he said, giving her shoulder a squeeze, grinning.

A few years ago, when Carol’s father was getting ready to sell the house, she’d helped him go through everything. Again, she came across the luggage, now grey, still mysteriously monogrammed. She had to fight the childlike impulse to ignore it.

‘Dad, what’s with this?’

He looked up from the box of records he was flipping through. ‘What?’

‘The G on this monogram. What’s it for?’

He sighed. He seemed to be deciding whether or not to lie. ‘Graham,’ he said quietly.

‘Graham? What’s that?’

‘That was the last name of your mother’s first husband.’

‘What?’

‘Daniel Graham. They were married for only a few months when he was sent to the war. He didn’t come back.’

‘Are you serious?’ Of course he was serious. ‘How long after he died did she remarry?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘A year?’

‘Not quite.’

Carol’s eyes bulged.

‘Look,’ he said, smoothing the sides of his grey hair, fidgeting and breathing heavily. ‘Your mother and I had known each other for years. We’d gone to school together. We were friends. Daniel was a few years older. I was heartbroken when they got married.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So when I had another chance, I didn’t waste a lot of time.’

‘Why didn’t anyone ever tell us?’

‘She didn’t like to talk about it. And I guess we didn’t really think you needed to know.’

Carol sat there shaking her head as her entire understanding of reality shifted.

It didn’t take her long to start wondering what else her parents had decided she didn’t need to know. Going through the basement with her father, Carol pocketed anything that might have answers. According to the papers she was able to find, her parents had been married for slightly less than eight months when her brother was born. His pale green ‘Baby Book’ listed his birth weight as nine pounds, eight ounces. Was this the weight of a premature infant? Carol thought it unlikely.

Years after her mother’s death, Carol stood at the front of a Catholic church wearing white without lying. Her mother had doubted the day would ever come. Years later, she pored over her parents’ wedding photos, searching the bride’s eyes for clues. She began to imagine her mother standing at the front of a Catholic church with a determined smile on her face and a secret in her belly.

While Carol was dating Mark, her mother had given her this piece of advice: ‘You should marry a man who loves you just a little bit more than you love him.’

Carol had been infuriated by the implication. Seventeen years old, in a world that revolved entirely around her, it was an insult to the love she and Mark shared. She never considered what this said about her mother. What it said about her parents’ marriage. Perhaps her mother had loved her first husband too much; so much that she couldn’t let herself get hurt by loving someone that way again. Perhaps her first marriage had been about love, her second about necessity.

Certainly Carol would never ask her father to fill in any of these blanks. How could she? He had called from work every Wednesday afternoon of her childhood and asked his wife out for that Friday. Carol and her brother would stay home alone, eating macaroni and cheese or fish sticks and ketchup, every single Friday night of their young lives.

These were the fragments Carol used to piece together her mother’s identity. She would never really know. It was too late to know her now.

Riley never left the house except to get the mail. She came back, breathless, and walked into Carol’s room right away to sort it. She sat on the bed and passed her mother the get-well cards and the Pottery Barn catalogue.

‘Wanna play cards?’ she asked, as Carol ripped open a lavender envelope.

‘Okay.’

She went out and set the rest of the mail on Mark’s desk. Carol could hear her rifling through drawers.

‘They’re in the kitchen,’ she called. ‘Top drawer, next to the sink.’