I leave my purse on the marble table by the door. My stomach rumbles. I never ate lunch. All I had was coffee and toast at the diner this morning. Then I picked up the bagels for Trey.
I feel so stupid just hearing his name in my head. I can’t believe I thought everything he said last night was real and true. Then he point blank admitted to me this morning that I shouldn’t believe a word he says when he’s wasted. Maybe that’s the reminder I need to apply the brakes because I was starting to think there was hope. But capitalistic love and sex and kisses are better. Safer. At least they’re honest. No one’s pretending they feel. The money is on the table, and no one can get hurt.
Without an exchange, you can be played a fool.
With money, everyone is safe.
Cash can be recouped. It can be made and multiplied. Feelings can’t. They are loaned and borrowed and you can never pay them off.
I head to the kitchen.
There’s a tupperware container on the counter, and a Post-in note bearing my name. For Harley, only. Your favorite cookies in the whole world.
Inside are chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. I run a finger along the edge of the container, feeling wistful for a moment, longing for more of the cookies, more of the homework help, more of the bedtime stories.
More of the mom.
These treats from her will be a reminder that she can play that part too.
But first I need food, so I open the fridge and find a tupperware container full of African stew from the other night. I have no interest in food my mom makes for her latest lover. I spot a container of pasta primavera, but I bet that was last night’s culinary offering to Neil, so I pass on that too. I grab some carrots and hummus, set them on the counter, and open the drawers for a napkin.
I see a shadow in the living room. Only it’s not a shadow. It’s a man. It’s Neil and he’s about to walk into the kitchen.
In. His. Birthday. Suit.
“Oh crap.” He is tall, lanky, furry and his parts are swinging around.
I jerk my head away, because I want desperately to wipe the image of his limp dick from my brain. But it’s like an ambulance siren, screaming at me. You just saw your mom’s lover’s penis, and you noticed it was smallish, and had a mushroom head and now you can never ever ever escape from the image of his pecker swinging flaccidly between his hairy legs.
“I’m so sorry.”
I drop the hummus container onto the floor and it explodes on the tiles.
He jumps back, makes sure the hummus didn’t hit his toes. I stare at him – above the neck only, I will not look down – my eyes wide with shock. “Seriously? You are walking around the house na**d and you’re worried about hummus on your feet?”
“No. No. No. I was just surprised.”
I roll my eyes. “Obviously. Now get the hell out of here,” I say, and I don’t care that I don’t live here anymore. I don’t care that he probably has every reasonable right to have f**ked my mom in an afternoon delight on a Friday. But he is na**d and gross and in my house where I grew up, and I have had enough of my mother’s lovers.
“Barb went back to work, and I was taking a nap after –”
I hold up my hand in a firm stop sign. Shake my head forcefully. “No. Don’t go there. I don’t want to hear the story,” I say sharply because I don’t need to know he was taking an after-sex nap. I don’t need to know that my mom helped herself to a naughty nooner, then left her lover to snooze when she knew I was stopping by. That is the very definition of TMI.
“I’ll just turn around and go.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
I bend down to pick up the hummus, and I want to throw it at him. But then I’d have to lay eyes on his na**d body and there isn’t enough bleach in the world to white out what I just saw. I grab a towel, wipe up all the hummus, then toss the towel and the container in the trash.
Tears well up, but I don’t let them out. Because they’re mixed with far too much anger. Too much frustration. And way too many foul memories. Even though my mom’s at work I can smell her. My nostrils are filled with a scent I want to erase from the entire universe, and I can recall other encounters like this, when I’d bump into her after she’d had a roll in the hay while I was home. She’d be wearing a red dressing gown, mid-thigh length and silk, and smelling of sex. Musky and dirty and adult, like sheets tangled up that beg for a washing. Her scent, the scent of her bedroom, her nightgowns, her sexuality that she shared freely with me. I wrinkle my nose and try to hold my breath as the olfactory memory floods my senses.
I grab the bag of carrots from the counter and crunch into one, biting down hard. Chewing as if I can rid my mind of these images if I bite hard enough. Drilling into another carrot, I bear down, my teeth now a lethal weapon, slicing the carrot in half. I imagine it shrieking. Wishing it could.
Screw this.
I leave the carrots on the counter. Let her clean up the bag when she returns to her den of iniquity. Maybe they’ll be dried out and inedible when she sees them. I leave behind the cookies too, my small act of defiance.
I head for the front steps when Neil reemerges. He’s wearing jeans, cuffed once at the ankles ,and a striped button down.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, as if a double apology alleviates his trespass. But I will never see him as anything other than unwelcome.
I don’t answer him. I walk toward the door.
“Wait. Harley. Something came for you a few minutes ago.”