We sat in silence for a few minutes. And then I felt awful. I had been keeping a secret from him. It wasn't fair.
“Joe,” I said, looking over at his beautiful, tired face, “there's something I have to tell you.”
He looked over at me with an almost hopeful expression, as if he expecting me to reveal some shocking but very good news.
I felt my heart breaking.
I
stumbled out of my mother's bed, tripped over Timber, the Newfoundland, and went sprawling onto the floor.
“What happened?” William asked in a groggy voice.
“I fell,” I said, getting up and fumbling for the bedside lamp.
Timber was blinking up at me but seemed completely unharmed. My knee was throbbing and I'd probably have a bruise. It was the least of the indignities that had befallen me in the four days that I'd been dog sitting for my vacationing mother. Ira, her three-legged hound who was experiencing separation anxiety, had peed on me, the house's water heater had exploded, and Mom's ex-girlfriend had shown up in the yard, naked. But I'd dealt with these various horrors and, to soothe myself, invited William up. I hadn't seen much of him in the few weeks since we'd first slept together. In that time, I had been on a vicious losing streak at the track, Clayton had been in a fight at Rikers and lost half a finger, and Candy had contracted giardia, an intestinal ailment that gave her intense diarrhea. I'd actually been glad to escape to my mother's house atop a small mountain, gladder still when William had agreed to come up.
“Are you all right?” William asked.
“Fine. I'll probably have a bruise, but I'm fine.”
“You look beautiful,” he said, propping up on one elbow.
I squinted at him like he was a lunatic. Then I looked down at myself and realized I was wearing a slinky red nightgown. I'd found it hanging on a hook in the bathroom and had to assume it belonged to my mother. I'd never known her to own such a garment, but then again, I hadn't known her to sleep with men either.
“Thank you,” I said, staring at William. He was naked, lolling there comfortably in spite of the slight wings of fat around his middle. I'm not a naked person. There's nothing wrong with my body. People seem to like it, and I don't particularly mind it, but I've always felt weird walking around with my ass hanging out. I wear nightgowns or pajamas to bed. I do enjoy skinny-dipping, but you won't find me at a nudist colony.
“Why don't you get back into bed?” William asked.
“I have to pee.”
“Hurry,” he said.
For what? I wondered. Though William was very pleasing in bed, he wasn't one of those prodigal lovers, like Clayton, for example, who, when things had been going reasonably well between us, wanted me in the morning, in the afternoon, outdoors, in my sleep, in the back of his van, etc.
I went into the hall and to the bathroom. I shut the door, turned on the light, and started running water in the sink. I didn't actually need to pee or wash my hands or face but I did need the white noise of running water to help me think. I was deeply confused. On one hand, I missed Clayton, but this missing seemed to have been engendered by his imprisonment, which might indicate that I am more emotionally ill than I ever suspected. On the other hand, there was William, reaching parts of me I didn't know existed. He disturbed and excited me on a molecular level. I liked his mind, I liked the intense and intimate sex, I even liked his dog, Gumdrop. I was in deep and I don't like to be in anything deep other than a Pick 6 carryover at Belmont Park.
I turned off the faucet and left the bathroom.
I tiptoed over Timber and climbed under the sheets. William had fallen back asleep. I lay on my side and stared at him. He didn't look idiotic in sleep. His wide, pale face was relaxed, his mouth was slack, but he wasn't drooling or doing anything disgusting, though I knew the disgusting was inevitable. Bathroom doors left open, stinky socks left strewn, drooling, belching, farting, general loss of inhibition. But I was actually contemplating the disgusting with William. William who I'd slept with just three times so far. William who I really didn't know or trust but possibly wanted to know and trust. It was too much to deal with. I closed my eyes and counted horses.
I opened one eye and peered at William. He was still sleeping. I touched his face. He stirred a little, let out a sigh. I started kissing his chest then biting his stomach. He came to life. Reached for my hips and hoisted me on top of him. I ground my body into his, then pushed forward, wanting to get closer and then closer still. I came like that, sprawled on top of him.
I started to wiggle off but he kept me there. He wasn't done with me.
I hoped he never would be.
Forty minutes later, William had gotten out of bed, showered, turned on his cell phone, cursed the lack of reception, and announced he had to go.
“Go?” I said. “What do you mean
go?
Go where?”
“I have to get back,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Even though it was Saturday and I couldn't imagine what might be so pressing for an architect on a Saturday.
“Oh?” I said, looking him over head to toe, trying to read his face, his body, his mind.
What the fuck?
We hadn't talked about how long he'd stay, but I'd envisioned two nights. And now I was upset. At him for wanting to leave, and myself for not wanting him to.
I imagined my face was long, a little sullen looking, his cue to interject something like,
I wish I didn't have to go.
He said nothing though, just put his toiletries kit into his overnight bag. The bag looked full, as if he'd planned to stay more than one night but had changed his mind.
“Walk me to my car?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. I felt all my hopes shrivel up and trot off to a corner to die. I watched William as he put his bag into the backseat of his ancient Saab.
“Okay, bye,” I said, giving him a hard look.
He put one hand under my chin and tilted it up. With the other hand, he brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes.
He kissed me very softly. I was stiff at first, then melted into the kiss. Just as I was about to suggest we return to bed, he pulled back.
“See you soon,” he said. He got into his car, put it into reverse, and backed out of the driveway.
I stared after him, expecting him to turn around and come back.
He did not.
I went into the house and wandered from room to room, dogs following me as I went. I was restless. Surprised. Angry. I wanted to smash something. But I couldn't smash my mother's things.
For the first time, I really noticed my mother's deranged color scheme, the walls painted orange in one room, lime-green in the next, but all of it somehow actually working. It was a lovely house, I realized, one filled with my mother's relentless spirit.
I wandered back into the bedroom where the bed was still rumpled. Ira, the three-legged hound, jumped onto the bed and looked at me with huge brown eyes. He was soon joined by Harvey. They were willing me to pull myself together and take them out. But I felt lifeless and broken.
I shuffled into the bathroom and glanced at myself in the mirror. I'd expected worse. My hair wasn't plastered to my head with grease and, for once, my face was free of blemishes.
I idly opened the medicine cabinet because medicine cabinets are always an interesting glimpse into the physical secrets of a house's inhabitants. Do they have headaches? Diarrhea? Itching? Something more ominous like a psychiatric disorder? I didn't know these sorts of details about my mother.
I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I found. The cabinet was chock full of prescription drugs. I didn't know what half of them were, but the other half were painkillers. Were they Betina's or was my mother working some local quack for opiate prescriptions? I examined a bottle of Oxycontin; Mom's name was on it. The prescription date was recent.
Take 1â2 every six hours for pain as needed.
This explained my mother's looking thin and drawn.
I slammed the medicine cabinet door shut. I felt my stomach knotting up. I had met some of Mom's Narcotics Anonymous friends but it's not like I had their phone numbers to call and ask if she was on a relapse. Eloise probably didn't know any more than me and was still away somewhere with her movie star lover. My stomach knotted tighter. The dogs were swarming around me now, some whining softly, some just staring at me. Harvey grabbed the corner of a towel, pulled it off the towel rack, and engaged Lucy, the Ibizan hound, in a game of tug.
I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet and put my face in my hands. I probably should have cried but tears wouldn't come.
Harvey licked my bare foot. Candy put her front paws on my knee, and when I looked up from under my veil of hair, I saw that she was staring at me imploringly.
“All right,” I said, slowly getting to my feet, “all right.”
I stuffed my pockets with dog treats and shuffled into the kitchen. I put half the animals out on the sun porch where there were many beds and bowls of water and nothing to destroy. I shooed the other half outside and into my mother's van, where Candy reluctantly shared the front passenger seat with Carlos, the toothless Chihuahua.
I headed down Byrdcliffe Road toward Bearsville and Rabbit Hole Road. I know my mother takes the dogs there as a special treat and I remembered the time she had forced Eloise and me to go there for a mildly arduous hike involving several crossings of a raging creek.
It was a winding road with a swollen rushing creek on one side, pretty farmhouses on the other. I pulled into the dirt parking lot near the trailhead and unloaded the animals. I unleashed the dogs who would come back when called, and proceeded onto the trail, my arm nearly pulled from its socket by Rosemary, a German shepherd who wished dismemberment upon all squirrels.
We reached the first creek crossing, and while the water wasn't as high as I remembered, hopping from rock to rock still looked like a precarious operation. I had put on a pair of Mom's hideous Teva sandals, the kind of sensible footwear designed for this sort of thing, but the rocks in the creek were mossy and looked slippery. I pictured sliding into the water, losing control of Rosemary, and possibly cracking my skull open.
As I stood studying the rushing creek and breathing in the clean, sweet air, I suddenly choked up and tears came. I felt weak and squatted down on my haunches. Rosemary, sensing something, had grown perfectly still, as had the other two leashed dogs. Even some of the loose ones had hopped back across the creek and come to stand near me. The pack seemed to realize that the human was having a meltdown. This somehow made it worse. I wept.
I was lost inside myself when Rosemary pivoted her head and let out several sharp barks. I turned around and there, amazingly, was my sister, Eloise. She looked more beautiful than I'd ever seen her. She was wearing loose-fitting gray pants and a flowing white blouse. She was barefoot. She still had the hitch in her step but now it just seemed to add to the regalness of her bearing.
“Eloise?” I said, standing up.
Some of the loose dogs ran up to Eloise and surrounded her.
“Alice,” she said, seeming unsurprised to find me on this remote trail, surrounded by dogs, with tears staining my cheeks.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as she came closer.
“Walking,” she said dreamily. “Ava and I just got back. She's unpacking. I decided to stretch my legs.”
I had forgotten that Ava Larkin's house sits near the mouth of the Rabbit Hole trail and that it was here that Mom met Ava in the first place.
“You're going to get foot diseases,” I said, motioning at her bare feet.
She smiled a strange smile that seemed to say that kind of thing was beneath her. Her eyes were far away and sparkly at first, then she seemed to really see me for the first time and her face changed.
“Alice, you're
crying
?”
“I'm sad.” I shrugged.
“What's the matter?”
“Let's walk, and I'll tell you,” I said since the dogs were getting impatient.
I got Eloise to take two of them across the creek while I handled Rosemary. I remembered Elo struggling to cross the creek the time we'd come here with Mom, but that was preâmovie star lesbian lover Elo; this new Elo crossed barefoot with a dog in each hand and didn't miss a beat.
On the other side, we took up the narrow, slightly muddy path leading deep into the woods. The creek was at our left, a lush hill to our right, little waterfalls bursting from it every few steps.
“So?” said Eloise after we'd walked in silence for a few minutes.
“I think Mom's getting high again.”
“No way.”
“I think so.” I told her about the pills.
“Maybe she's really in pain.”
“We're all really in pain. But pain-meds pain? No. She'd have told us.”
Eloise agreed that it was a worry. That, between taking up with a man, taking a vacation, and apparently taking pain meds, something had to be wrong with our mother.
“You think the relapse made her heterosexual?” my sister asked.
“What, because she'd have to be stoned to have sex with a man? Are you an expert on lesbianism now?”
“I'm not an expert on anything, Alice, that's your department,” my sister said sadly. “I wasn't implying that it would take a drug relapse to make someone switch back to men. I just mean she's not in her right mind and she ended a long-term relationship, and, seemingly out of the blue, took up with someone of a different gender.”
I said nothing.
“So you were crying over our mother?” Eloise asked after a couple more minutes of strolling in silence.
“Is it my crying you're skeptical about or my crying over our mother?”
“Well,” Eloise said carefully, “a bit of both.”
“Yes. I am crying over our mother. And there's the problem of that man,” I added.
“Clayton?”
“Well, him, but William too. You know. The architect with the brown pit bull.”
Suddenly, my sister's head pivoted on its neck so fast I thought it might twist off.
“Brown pit bull?” she practically hissed.
“Yes. Gumdrop,” I said, frowning at Elo's reaction.