Lies and Whispers
Thirsty Work — Chapter 4: I want you to want me
Two young women from California travel to New Orleans in search of redemption after the death of their mother. Carolee thinks she will show her little sister the world, but what they find in the barrooms of the French Quarter at Mardi Gras is more than she knows how to handle, or could have imagined back home. This is the fourth chapter of the novel Thirsty Work.
Not everyone was as pleased with the plan as I was. Johnny, for one, thought it was a terrible idea. We were up in my attic bedroom when I told him — my haven, a place my parents rarely entered because of the steep, narrow stairs. They rose up off the kitchen to a narrow room with a peaked roof where I could only stand erect in the center. Johnny had to duck his head even there, which hardly mattered, since he spent most of his time lying leonine on my single bed.
He was lying there now, scowling. Weeks worth of carelessly discarded clothes were scattered on the floor, making a thick, musty carpet. The abbreviated walls were papered with posters: a drawing of Bob Dylan with psychedelic, multi-colored hair; the Beatles in matching brown suits with black, Nehru collars; a curly-haired little girl frolicking in blue flowers above the italic inscription Today is the first day of the rest of your life!
The board and cinder block bookshelf erected along one wall held carefully curated badges of my professed adulthood — books by Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Ayn Rand — next to tenderly chosen remnants of my not quite relinquished childhood: a pink and white jewelry box with a wind-up ballerina on a gold spring; a family of trolls with ridiculous orange hair.
This was the same room I’d had when I was a girl with a mother. The same room I’d slept in when she grew sick. It held the same posters, the same books, the same trinkets and clothing. But it wasn’t the same. All the comfort was gone.
This was also the room where Johnny and I had begun our first fumbling attempts at lovemaking; where, at seventeen, two years into our relationship, I finally decided we could both take down our pants. As he stretched on the bed now, his jeans firmly buttoned, I caught an echo of that clumsy moment and smiled. But he wasn’t in the mood.
“Why do you have to go to New Orleans?” he asked aggressively.
“I don’t have to go, Johnny; I want to.” I frowned and shook my head.
“But why? To get away from me? To find another boyfriend?” His arms were crossed behind his head as if he were casually relaxing. But the tendons stood out sharply from his arms. A thick, purple vein pulsed in his neck.
“No, Johnny,” I denied it softly, placatingly. I knelt on the floor beside the bed, put a tentative hand on his denim hip, sidled up, sweetened my tone. “The sisters asked me to take Cathy away for awhile, to get her out of Stockton, to show her the world, and I really want to do that for her — and for them. But she hasn’t wanted to go anywhere until I suggested this trip. Now she says she’s ready to go. And I’m ready, too. I’m feeling suffocated here! Daddy’s walking around like a zombie. Mom is…” I faltered, sucked in air, pushed ahead in a rush. “I’m just thinking that if maybe I can get away from here for a while, maybe when I come back things will be different.” My eyes were wet.
Johnny looked at me with sympathy for an instant before his face shut tight. He wasn’t interested in any talk of transformation; he wasn’t falling for any bullshit. “But what are you going to do in New Orleans?” he asked. “What, specifically, are you and Doug going to do?” He sat up on the bed now and looked at me sternly. His legs were spread wide and his hands, resting on them, were partially clenched. He chewed on the inside of his cheek.
“Not much,” I inched imperceptibly backward. “Just get away. Just see the world.” I hesitated, considering the chances. “You could come with us, if you’re really worried about it,” I said finally. “If you’re so worried about me and your good buddy Doug, why don’t you just quit your job and come?”
Johnny had just started a good job at a local restaurant. The money he made would pay for his college next Fall. “You know I can’t do that,” he scowled, as expected. My stomach muscles unclenched.
“Then just let me go without spoiling it by getting mad at me, okay?” I coaxed — too soon.
“But why shouldn’t I be mad at you, Carolee? You’ve been acting like an ass ever since the funeral. You’ve been treating me like a nobody — a stranger. And now, just when I get this good job, just when I send my applications away to college, just when I need you most, you tell me you’re going to New Orleans — with Doug!”
All the rage I’d been suppressing since Mom’s death exploded . “Just when you need me?!” I shouted incredulously. “Just listen to yourself! How can you even say that? Where were you when I needed you at the funeral! Oh, sure, you carried the coffin, though I’m sure it was awfully hard for you, though I’m sure it was terribly heavy. But you carried it all right. You put my mother in the ground. Then you had the balls to complain about how bad it made you feel! As if nobody here matters but you!”
Johnny was stunned. He’d already apologized for the awful argument we had the day of the funeral. He thought all had been forgiven. But that wasn’t the only reason I was mad.
There was Johnny waiting impatiently for me to come home from the hospital the night Mom died. There was Johnny driving me to San Francisco — away from her. There was Johnny sitting calmly next to me all through that stupid play we went to see, sometimes laughing out loud at the antics of the actors, never wondering why I wasn’t laughing, never noticing that I was harboring an ugly secret: Mom was dying, I knew she was dying. I felt Death in her room. But I ran away!
There was Johnny accepting my suggestion that he drop me off at the curb that night instead of walking me inside the house like always; leaving me alone to face the big, black bowling ball of a moment that had been rolling toward me in slow motion all night: the moment I entered the house, starkly terrified, to find out if anything had happened to Mom.
The living room was washed in tears.
Candace sat on the couch, red-eyed and whimpering. She opened her wide, red mouth slowly and repeatedly, like a fish dying on a dock. Daddy sat blanch-faced and vacant-eyed on the blue-checked easy chair. Casey buried her beautiful face in her hands. Cathy held a torn paper towel tight in her fist. Kendra stepped toward me, reached out her hand, opened her mouth to speak.
“Don’t tell me!” I shrieked as I stood in the entryway. “Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me! I already know!” I ran up to my room, this room, with the stupid teddy bears and tiny trolls and the cute little girl on the poster — all sneering at me. They knew what kind of person I was.
But Johnny didn’t know. He had no way of knowing. I never told anyone what had happened that night. But I hated him anyway.
I wasn’t sitting beside him on the floor any longer. I was pacing up and down the center of the room. Johnny stood up and came to me. He caught me gently by the shoulders, turned me around to face him, spoke to me slowly. “Carolee, listen, I told you before, I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have complained to you about the funeral. I just didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I was upset. You know I loved her too.”
“But you…” I couldn’t say what I was thinking. But you helped me run away. You took me to San Francisco.
His wide, strong hands, his open, apologetic face, seemed to sap all the rage out of me. I began to shudder and cry. Tears tasted salty in my mouth.
“Listen Carolee,” he crooned, coaxing. “Baby. You don’t have to go to New Orleans to get away.” He looked at me in earnest, lifted my chin, tightened his grip on my waist. “We could move in together. Get an apartment. We could get married. You’re old enough now. I have a good job. I thought that was always the plan.”
The room stilled. I stopped shuddering. The walls seemed to be listening. This was a moment, one of those rare and magnified moments, when I could change the course of my life. Johnny’s bowed head, his wide chest, his thick arms and broad hands, made a welcome nest for me, a soft cushion, a warm, inviting pool. I felt myself straining toward him, my whole body ached to fall in. Then the curtain at the window billowed. The streetlight outside clicked on with a buzz.
Suddenly Johnny’s grip felt restrictive; his head loomed too large. All that was straining toward him a moment before began to pull away from him. I wasn’t ready to become his wife, his helper, his hostage. I didn’t want him reminding me of my guilty secret every day. I didn’t want to submit to a lifetime in Stockton. I wanted to get away.
But I wanted him to wait for me, just in case I was deluded.
“Oh Johnny,” I murmured. “You know we can’t do that. We’ve got to graduate from college first. We’ve got to get better jobs. We haven’t got enough money to pay for an apartment. And besides, I’m not ready — yet. Just let me do this one, last thing. Please? Please, Johnny? Then we’ll see what we can put together when I get back.”
Johnny snorted in disbelief and withdrew his hands.
I remembered our first date, my first official date ever, when he tenderly held the car door open for me, protectively closed his hand over mine in the movie theater, dropped me off without even trying to kiss me at the door. All the tenderness I’d ever felt for him washed over my ragged nerve endings.
“I’ll come back Johnny,” I promised. “I’ll come back to you,” forcing my way into the soft shelter under his arm. “Shit, I have to come back. I live here!” I tried laughing lightly. Then my chest got tight and I pressed my face into the sweaty, fragrant hollow of his neck. “I have to come back because I love you,” I whispered urgently.
But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure.
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