For A Good Time, Call... Read online

  I dressed in a pair of high waisted jeans and a tight blue crop top, slipping into a pair of low boots, and tying my hair back. My phone had remained stubbornly silent throughout the night and I couldn't bring myself to be the one who called first.

  Before I set off, I sat down on the bed and took a few work calls. It wouldn't do me any good to lose clients because I was on some tour of my past. Besides, it distracted me from the fact that Hunter still hadn't called. Even though I knew he was always up before six and it was well after eleven.

  I grabbed a cab, giving them the address to my grandmother's house. It looked like I remembered: big, white, full of secrets. My grandfather had died young and left my grandmother sitting on a boatload of money and a massive family estate that had been in his family for generations. It sat on a fifty acre plot and I walked up the driveway on the right side and slipped into the woods. It had been so long and the trees and bushes had matured beyond recognition, but I still knew my way back. I could probably walk it in my sleep.

  It was a good twenty minute walk before the trees started to clear and I saw the outline of the house that built me. Plain. Still as simple as I remembered. And smaller. If I thought my apartment in the city was a shoe box, this was a matchbox.

  “Isaiah,” I called, but knew there would be no answer. He wasn't going to leave our father's side when he was so close to the end. My grandmother had never stepped foot into the house. She had always been more than a little embarrassed that it was on her property, but she had always indulged every whim of my father's. Which was probably why he was so screwed up in the first place.

  There were flowers dying in the front beds. Flowers my father had always told my mother were frivolous and unnecessary. I remember her insisting that god wouldn't have given us plants that were useless if he didn't mean for us to enjoy them. I walked over, kneeling down and picking a few. Then I got up and turned away from the house, walking further into the woods.

  My grandmother hadn't given me a lot of details about it, but I remember her saying something about a lilac bush. And there was only one on the entire property. I came upon it a few minutes later, a simple white cross right in front of the old unruly lilac bush. I felt a tightness in my throat and struggled against it as I walked closer. I knelt down in front of it, feeling more than a little angry at the lack of care that was put into her grave.

  Deena Mary Meyers. No date or birth or death. No mention of her being a beloved mother or devoted wife. Just a name. In death, that was all my mother was worth to my father. I put the flowers down at the base of the cross, touching her name with a sort of reverence I didn't know I was capable of.

  “I don't know if I believe in an after life. Or that you can hear me,” I said, feeling awkward but bold. “I'm sorry I wasn't here. That I didn't mourn you the way I should have when I found out. And I'm sorry that you suffered for so long just because of me. I was never grateful enough for everything you did for me. If you hadn't been brave enough to defy my father, I never could have had the basic skills I needed to start my own life. And I'm just...” I trailed off, blinking away the tears. No tears. She was free. She was where she wanted to be. There was no use crying over her decision. “Thank you, Mom,” I said, touching the cross once more and getting to my feet.

  I felt better as I made my way back to the house. I felt like I had finally been giving the chance to pay my mother her respects. I felt the years of guilt slowly start to slip away.

  Opening the front door, I stepped into the darkness I had grown up in. The literal darkness. The light only from the few windows my mother used to scrub mercilessly but now were covered in a layer of film and filth. Everything was the same: the dirt floor, the worn sofa, the wooden furniture, the plain walls. I ran my hand over the dining table, coming away with dust, as I made my way into my old bedroom. Now Isaiah's room.

  It was his now. The curtain gone. My old bed missing. But there was a small chest in the far corner and I walked over to it, remembering it as a Christmas present one year. We got one gift and it was always handmade by one of our parents. One year it was new heavy knitted blankets for out beds. Blankets that I had never seen her working on so she must have done late at night or early into the morning. Another year it was a hunting knife for Isaiah and a rag doll for me.

  The chest was probably the only thing my father had ever actually taken the time to make me. The year I was born. When there was still hope for me, I guess. It was small. Two feet long and a foot wide. It had always been more than enough room to store my meager possessions. It was made of light wood and the top had a big cross burned into it. The front had Proverbs 29:15 burned in: “Whoever spares the rod, hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”

  Why he even bothered to put that there when he had no intentions to teach me to read was completely beyond my comprehension. I ran my hand over the lid, wiping the dust away before opening it. Inside smelled like the dried lilacs and mint my mother had always kept inside. To keep the moths from eating our clothes or blankets.

  Nestled neatly on top were my knitting needles, and a circle of embroidery I had been working on when I left. There was a collection of fabric headbands I had made from scraps of clothing material, an indulgence I was allowed only because my father didn't like anything to go to waste.

  I pulled out the bible resting there, meaning to throw it on Isaiah's bed when I noticed it felt weird. The spine was loose and the pages felt like they might fall out. Curious, I flipped open the first page, to find all the bible pages had been pulled out and replaced with small scraps of paper. Ones with my grandmother's watermark on them. Ones that my mother must have stolen when she went over there for holidays.

  Fiona,

  I wish I could find the nerve to be less of a coward and tell you these things... like all mothers do while raising their children. But I couldn't take a chance that you might slip up and say something in front of your father. The punishment would be beyond your comprehension as a girl. But if you are a woman reading this, you know what I mean. And you never get used to it. And I can't bring myself to risk it.

  I hadn't wanted to marry him you know. I was just shy of eighteen and I was planning of running as far as fast as my legs could carry me. Away from my father who was fond of the rod himself. Fond of making me feel like I was inconsequential. Then, as if sensing my growing departure, he handed me over to John like a prized sow. I was bought and sold, Fiona. My father got two deers a year for the first five years, and your father got me.

  He wasn't such a monster then. Your father. He was still young, uncertain. Insecure. I think having me to boss around and discipline gave him confidence, gave him purpose. And, oh, how he enjoyed that. Your brother was born ten months after we married. A huge, squirming baby boy that your father had cried over. For the first year after him, I was the beloved wife. I was the woman who gave him a son. Then I got pregnant again. I knew you were a girl, I was carrying different than I had with Isaiah, but I dared not tell your father.

  I named you Fiona after my own mother. Someone I hoped you turned out like. Someone I hoped I had turned out a little bit like. Someone with her silent rebellions. Someone who got away with things the abusive men in her life never found out about. That's why I knew enough to start teaching you things: reading and writing... some math, some history. I knew because she defied my father. You know because I defied yours.

  My greatest hope in life is that you never have to know what that is like. My greatest hope is that you can break free from this pattern of subjugation- that you bow to no man.

  Mom

  I had to rest my hand against the wall to keep from falling over. My mother had destroyed a bible to finally get the chance to tell me her story. My mother must have been writing and hiding these letters for years. She must have piled them in with all my possessions the day I left. Right before she went out to the woods and finally got away from the men she had needed to bow down to for her ent
ire life.

  I slipped the first note back on top of the pile and flipped the book to reach for the last one.

  Fiona,

  God, I hope you're gone. Good and gone. Miles and miles away. I know your stubborn spirit. I know your pain. And I know you would rather die out on the street than live another moment in this house. I hope that drive keeps you warm and keeps your hungry for your independence. You're resilient and you're smart. A few weeks or months of hardship will be nothing if it leads you to a better life than you had here. I pray you'll be happy in whatever life you build for yourself.

  And I hope you can forgive me. For what I am going to do. I hope you'll understand. You needed to get out. And I do too. Isaiah is a grown man now. He doesn't need his mother. And he never really did. It was you I had always worried about. And now my worry can transform into hope and I can finally let go. Please don't think of me as a coward. I have endured so much. Much more than I would ever tell you. This has been something I have been planning since you were born- the day when we could both be free in our separate ways.

  I love you. I love you more deeply than I thought my rotten bones ever could. You are everything good and right in this world. I hope you found that out for yourself before reading this. And I hope some day we can meet again. Goodbye, Fiona.

  Mom

  PS: The Lilacs are beautiful this time of year.

  I closed my eyes. Not because it was, essentially, her suicide note. But because of how calm it sounded. How free of sadness or anger or regret. Her handwriting was perfect. Neat. Not rushed. There were no tears smearing the ink and warping the paper. She had very deliberately sat down just hours after I ran away and wrote the last thing she would ever write, knowing she was about to go into the woods and take her own life.

  I looked down at the last sentence. The lilacs are beautiful this time of year. Maybe she was worried that my father would move her. Would put her body somewhere other than where she had chosen to die. She wanted me to know, just in case.

  Slipping the page back into the book, I closed the cover and put it down on the floor. I pulled everything else out: my old rag doll, handmade mittens and a matching hat made by my mother for my seventeenth birthday, and finally, that knitted blanket that had kept me warm every night for most of my life. I laid it out on the floor, putting all the other items inside, and wrapping it back up. I wouldn't leave them behind. They were the proof that my mother existed, that she had always loved and taken care of me and they belonged in my life. The chest, however, could be torn apart and used for firewood for all I cared.

  I paused in the dining room, reaching into my purse and pulling out the glossy magazine. I smiled as I placed it on the dining room table and flipped it open to a particularly scandalous image.

  Opening the door, I screeched, flying back a step and almost falling over. Isaiah was in the doorway, his arm perched high on the doorjamb. I had a sudden and frantic surge of panic seeing him that I quickly pushed away. He was slumped forward, his head hung.

  “Isaiah?” I asked, trying to draw his attention.

  “Fiona Mary,” he said, not bothering to look up. Like he knew I was there. “He's gone,” he said, looking up at me. But there wasn't just grief there. It was there, in the redness to his eyes. There was more, though. A lack of tension in his shoulders, in the slackness to his jaw.

  “Good,” I said, but not with as much anger as I felt.

  Isaiah's eyes shot up to mine. “That is extremely...”

  “I know that you loved him, Isaiah. But I know that you feel a sense of relief too. And that's okay. It's not wrong.”

  “Yes it is,” he said, shaking his head at himself.

  I felt myself reaching out, touching his arm for the briefest of seconds. “Grieve. Bury your father,” I said. “but then move on. Okay? You need to have your own life outside of all of this,” I said, waving a hand toward the house as he moved inside and past me, looking around. He reached a hand up to run through his hair and my mouth fell open. “Isaiah,” I said, my breath a whisper. “what is that on your hand?”

  His arm fell quickly, automatically. Shamefully. But then he looked at his palm for a second before holding it up and out at me. There, etched in the center of his palm, was a huge, raised scar in the shape of a cross. And I realized with blinding clarity that I hadn't been the only one to get punished that night when I was ten. When I was carved into. I didn't even remember Isaiah crying out or coming in bloody. But I had been slipping in and out of consciousness that night and then in and out of hallucinations from an infection fever for the week following.

  “He wanted to make sure I saw God anytime I even thought about...”

  He couldn't even say the word. That was how much of an influence our father still had on him. “Masturbated,” I supplied and he jerked back, wincing slightly. “That's the word,” I said. “Masturbating. And it isn't bad and wrong and sinful,” I said, then waved a hand out toward the dining room table. “In fact... I left you a present there,” I said and watched as he slowly walked over and saw the naked woman, her large breasts soft and fleshy, her leg propped up on a chair to the side Captain Morgan style so you could see right to her naughty bits. Isaiah's breath hissed out of his mouth and he slowly sat down, his arms resting on the table and unable to look away. “When you decide to leave all this shit behind,” I said. “and you want to know more about real life, you can contact me. Okay? I can ease you into it so you don't get overwhelmed or, more likely, freak out the normal people.”

  He looked up at me then, his green eyes intense. “Okay,” he said.

  “You have my address,” I said and he nodded. “You can write. Or even just show up. I'm almost always there.”

  “Alright. Thanks,” he said, nodding at me. “The funeral is going to be the day after tomorrow. Grandmother is burying him in the plot on the other side of Grandfather,” he told me, which went completely against my father's wishes, but he was dead... he couldn't object. “Nine in the morning.”

  “Alright, thanks. I'll see you around Isaiah,” I said, walking out the door, the slam it made sounding somewhere deep in my soul.

  I was done. Finished. With all of the pain and the guilt. It was all settled. I had said my peace to my father. I had found a piece of my mother. And I had figured out that my brother, who had always seemed spoiled and condescending toward me, had been almost as tortured as I had. Which took away some of my anger at him. He would be alright. He would need a few months to put himself together and figure out what he wanted out of life. And then he would come to me. Some day. I was sure of it.

  Nineteen

  In the end, I had stayed for the funeral. It only felt right. I had stood back from the ceremony that was already pitifully small, just the priest and the distant relatives that were conned by family obligation stood next to my grandmother and brother.

  I grabbed the next bus back to the city with a different kind of knot in my stomach. Because he hadn't called. Well, that wasn't entirely true. I had one missed call when I got back from the woods. Fucking no reception out in the boonies. But there was no message and no texts. I had called back three times but got nowhere and I couldn't bring myself to leave a message.

  If he wanted to, he would call.

  But he didn't and I couldn't shake the awful feeling in my belly. I needed to get back to the city as soon as possible. I needed to see him. To feel him again.

  The bus ride felt five times longer on the way home as it did on the way there. I sat silently, trying to concentrate on my mother's letters. But Hunter's face kept invading my thoughts. I couldn't shake them so I eventually gave up on the letters, tucking them safely back into my suitcase and staring out the window the rest of the trip.

  I had to hold myself back from running into the building. It looked the same as I left it: worn, old, shitty. But home. It was home. I let myself into my apartment, dropping my things in the entryway and going to make a pot of coffee. He wo
uld be there any minute. As soon as he heard me there, he would come over and welcome me home. Preferably with hard, punishing sex. The sexual tension I had built up over the past few days had made me hot and antsy all the time.

  When I was done with my second cup of coffee and I still hadn't heard from him, I went about putting my things away, taking a long hot shower, primping myself up to look my best for him. I slipped into a bright blue thong... and nothing else.

  And waited. And waited. And waited.

  Before I knew it, night was coming down fast and I still hadn't seen him. I tried not to freak out. He was probably out. Maybe he had booked extra work the time when he thought I would be away so he could take me to bed for a week straight when I got back. Maybe that was the plan. In which case, I couldn't be mad. I hadn't even told him I was on my way back.

  I threw a shirt on and curled up in front of the television. But sleep wouldn't come. Whatever hiatus I had from the bad thoughts and nightmares I had had while back in my hometown, and around Hunter was gone.

  My thigh was driving me crazy. The itchiness meant I was healing. Physically. Scabbing over. The thing I never realized about cutting was the addiction connected to it. Especially for someone who already struggled with addictive issues. Your body gets used to that rush of endorphins. It craves them. It needs them to deal with the bad sensations.

  But I didn't want to cut into myself anymore. I wanted to heal. I wanted to feel better, to treat myself better. I didn't want Hunter to have to find me on the floor in a puddle of my own blood again. I didn't want to have to wake up and realize I could have killed myself without even meaning to. I didn't want that life anymore.