Bedding
I jump over the exposed foam where the carpet of my parents' closet fails to meet the carpet of my parents' bedroom. Same colour blue-green algae. The foam seems untouchable, like cracks in a sidewalk, or three-day-old underwear. Middle of the night so I close the door behind me before I flick on the light. The closet is longer than I need to do a leg split but not long enough to do a cartwheel, wide enough to hold out my elbows but not to imitate a gliding hawk. The closet is padded with clothes on hangers; I can't see the walls but I know that they are there, hidden behind the suits and party dresses, and that they are peach. There's my mom's rack of shoes, the ones with heels dusty and scuff-less from lack of wear. My dad's rack of belts that he never used on us. Their clothes from the early eighties: my mom's shoulder-padded sweaters with sponge paint, excessive zippers and rhinestones; my dad's velour jogging suits in chocolate, blue and lime (with white piping). I wear these jogging suits — I like to know that they are inanimate but older than me. There is a picture of my dad with a full head of hair cradling me in his chocolate velour arms. Liked to think when I wear that suit it is as though two worlds are colliding. The same way I feel at night on the barren turnpike when a car appears up ahead in the slow lane. I'll pass that driver, thinking how we were like two vectors of time. I expect to hear something like a sonic boom but all I am left with are the glaring headlights in my rear-view and the empty road opening in front of me.
There is a cubbyhole with our folded, squashed gift boxes and wrapping paper waiting on long rolls like expectant uterus lining. No good way to store wrapping paper properly; take one down and the whole pile is spilling out onto our heads — Happy Hanukkah silver stars and Happy Birthdays, Congratulations and bits of Merry Christmas, kept on reserve just to be safe. My sister and I would shout, "Avalanche!" and giggle.
The top shelf winds around the whole room, stacked with old photo albums and case-less pillows and empty jewellery boxes. In the corners of the room are stuffed an ironing board and its iron, a vacuum cleaner, and a step-ladder; there, too, are my mom's out-of-tune acoustic guitar and my dad's old bugle. I suspect we keep them only for the amusement of visiting toddlers who like things that make noise. I have never seen my parents play these instruments.
On the floor are stacks of folded comforters and bedding abandoned when their colour schemes and cartoon prints went out of fashion. I find my favorite, a queen-size one with two hues of yellow. Have to lace my fingers together to keep my arms around its bulk. Turn out the light with my chin. I jump again, precariously, to avoid the nasty foam. Tiptoe out of my parents' bedroom by the orange glow of their nightlight; go back to my room. Hail is pummelling the siding of my house; it's going to be a freezing night tonight.
*
When I was twelve, my mom tucked me in and had just asked me if I wanted my door open or closed. Same question every bedtime. Same conflict every bedtime. If I left the door open then a robber would come into my room first because my door was directly across from the staircase. He would probably kill me. If I had the door closed, then the robber would go kill my parents and my eight-year-old sister, Hayley. Hayley's bedroom was right next to mine but she didn't sleep in it. She was too afraid. She wouldn't learn to sleep in her own bed until she was fourteen, when she would tie a piece of yarn to my dad's wrist and her own, linking them in their separate beds. She would tug on the yarn and know that he was there, at the other end of the hall, and be able to sleep on her own. But at eight, she was sleeping on the floor next to Mom's side of the bed. So, my family or me? I still hadn't decided what was worse. Mom was standing in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light. Instead of answering I asked, Mom, do you and dad have sex?
She laughed and said, "When's the cat's away, the mice will play."
*
I live in a three-story townhouse. The bedrooms are on the top floor, the kitchen and dining room on the second floor. It was two in the morning and we were in the den on the ground floor. Sprawled on the carpet. Picking at scabs. Nothing to do. I said, "Let's play strip poker." No argument from Mark or Cliff. I brought down a pack of cards. Mark dealt; I didn't even know how to play poker. One by one, we stripped off our shirts, pants, socks (one at a time), tossing the items to the side.
Suddenly we froze. Footsteps. None of us moved. My German Shepherd, Champ, trotted into the room. Paw-steps. She got excited at having company. Licked Mark's face. I pet her down and then told her to get out. She clambered back upstairs. We continued our game.
Cliff lost first, boldly stood up and let his boxers drop. I averted my eyes. I was still in my bra and underwear. Not matching. Cliff sat down, cross-legged. He was smiling. "Uh, might as well keep playing."
I lost my bra. My hair was long enough and I pulled it in front of my chest, a parted curtain modestly exposing only my face, neck and sternum.
Mark lost next. He sat cross-legged, too. This time I didn't avert my eyes. I snickered. He didn't match Cliff. And then I lost.
I hadn't actually considered the consequences of strip poker. I hesitated, then took off my underwear but wrapped my legs tightly about myself. They sat there, unabashedly exposed. Cliff said, "You are the least naked naked girl I have ever seen!"
We sat around for a few minutes. Mark said, "Wanna start over?" We shrugged our shoulders: okay.
My dog was coming down the stairs again. This time Cliff dealt the cards.
"Come on, Champ, let's go make." Dad.
Shit.
I fumbled for my underwear and ran to the computer desk. Slipped it on, but my bra and clothes were still on the other side of the room. I was sitting in the big executive computer chair, back facing the boys and my dad. They had gotten on their pants, skipping the boxers. Why hadn't I just thrown on my pants and a shirt? What on earth made me grab the underwear? Force of habit.
"Did Erin let you boys sleep over or something?"
I turned the chair around to face my dad. His eyes widened. "Erin, are you naked?" Pause. "Boys, I think it's time for you to leave."
They grabbed their clothes and ran out the door without good-byes.
"It was totally innocent," I said, without sounding apologetic. My dad had a pained smile on his face. I grinned mischievously back at him.
"I don't know whether to be angry or to make fun of you. Get dressed and go to bed."
*
He kissed me as he was walking out the door to go on tour with his punk band. First kiss. I was chewing gum. He said, on tour, he bought dark green Trident, my favourite, so he could taste me.
*
I was sitting on the examining table, annoyed as usual that the hygienic paper sheet crinkled each time I moved. I was reading a magazine; Dr. Ruby came in.
"Oh," she said. "You're still dressed." She pointed at a large piece of folded pink paper. "You're supposed to put that on. Take off everything but your socks. Well, you can take them off if you like."
I kept my socks on, stripped off the rest of my clothes. Tied on the pink paper dress with the flimsy white plastic ribbon. I was cold. Crunching paper sound as I sat back on the table. Dr. Ruby came back in.
"How's your mother?"
"Pretty good. Much better."
"And your Bubby? She hasn't been in in a while."
"Um, fine."
"All right," she said. "Put your feet in the stirrups."
A week earlier, I had told my mom I thought it was time I go see the gyno.
"Since I'm eighteen and I've been sexually active." Pause. "Don't tell Dad." She just nodded and made the appointment. That's how I told her.
*
It had been after senior prom, how typical. Two days after, actually. It would have happened earlier, but for convenience's sake. Tradition sends all the senior prom-goers down the shore after the big ball so for the first time my parents acquiesced to letting me get a hotel room. Finally, convenience. Eight of us went down to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware that morning after prom. We shared a suite in the Econo-Lodge that had two bedrooms and a living room with two foldout couches. The platonic couples slept on the foldouts while Laina and her boyfriend got one bedroom, Cliff and I the other, the one with the television. We all got drunk out on the porch and then went to our rooms. Two of our friends got into a fight and kept coming into our room, interrupting us to whine about each other as we tried to drink our private champagne in bed. We felt like consoling parents, just trying to put the kids to bed already. They left us alone but it didn't happen that night because I didn't want to be drunk, not the first time. The next day, every one else went to the beach and got sunburned while I got laid. It was strange in the daylight, seemed off. I felt bad for the maid who was going to find a used condom in the garbage and wondered if we'd leave stains. Figured: it's a motel, it must happen all the time. I was chewing gum; always chewed gum with him from the first kiss to the last. He was too fast and had to go a second time. I thought that was normal. Found out later that meant he was a premature ejaculator and laughed spitefully. Laid there trying to get excited by thinking, "I love you, I love you so much." Didn't work but it was okay. Afterwards, I had to pee. Saw that I didn't bleed and thought, maybe it didn't happen after all.
*
There are all sorts of prescription pills in my mom's night-table drawer, ten different bottles at least. I don't know what they are for but I figure if I take a bottle of anything, it'll do the trick. I had to crawl to get to my parents' bedroom, to the night table. They aren't home. I open all of the bottles, peer inside. Which ones are the prettiest? I pick the white ones shaped like triangles. No gel-coat. Perfect little impressions of numbers on one side only. Light, mesmerizing.
Dad locked it all up for a while, Mom's medicine. I had come home from school on the late bus. It was foggy and cold; I was delighted to see my dad's Tahoe waiting for me at the bus stop. I opened the door and hopped in and while I tried to connect my seatbelt he said, You're mom tried to commit suicide, just like that.
In the hospital, everyone was smiling: aunts, doctors, grandparents. Smiling Mom as she chuckled and told us how disgusting the charcoal was when they had used it to pump her stomach, how it would be in her piss and snot for days. How it clung to the cuticles of her fingers nails. Her skin on her hands was dry. She said it was an accident. She seemed so happy.
Hayley, twelve, was bouncing on my grandmother's lap. Jokes. I was on the floor huddled against the wall, not talking to anyone. Glaring. Choking on how close it had been. The taste of bile imagining life without her. I just sat there.
I'm not one for action, anyway. That's why I was the one who got dumped. That's why I slip the pills back in the bottle, put it back in the night-table drawer. I don't tell my parents.
*
"Come on Meier, I'm getting tired already!"
Mom turns to me with a knowing smirk.
"Your father."
It's ten at night; Mom and I are lying in their bed watching television. Dad comes in with the serum he just got out of the fridge; he had been in Hayley's room futzing with the Internet.
He opens the Biojector case. Takes out a needle and begins preparing the injection. It takes half an hour. They do this once a week. Mom is sitting with her thigh exposed, waiting.
"Helene, you've got to start exercising, Dr. Cohen said. You're losing all of your muscle tone. You're going to be in a wheelchair."
This is routine. My mom waves him off.
"I know, I know."
He pokes gently at her thigh, frowning.
"Look. There's not even enough meat. Soon, there won't be anywhere left to give you your shot."
It's Interferon. Supposed to help with her Multiple Sclerosis, slow down the deterioration. The Biojector looks like a gun. It's got a CO2 cartridge, like the kind I used in woodshop to propel my model racecar. The CO2 cartridge shoots all of the Interferon into the muscle tissue instantaneously. We got the Biojector so that Mom wouldn't have to get the traditional intramuscular needles, which are long and painful. Also, my dad is scared of needles and couldn't stand the thought of administering a real one. Ironically, my mom was trained as a medical technician. She took blood for a living until she stopped working. She coaches Dad, even now, as he says, "You know how much I hate this." She swabs a little patch of her thigh with alcohol. That smell always makes me anxious. I'm scared of needles, too. My dad presses the nozzle of the Biojector to her skin, puts his finger on the trigger. I turn my head, cover my ears but still hear the pop! and the harsh hiss of the gas escaping from the CO2 cartridge. All over. My dad seems relieved and packs away the Biojector. A luscious bruise is blooming on my mother's thigh.
*
My dad and I have driven separate vehicles to the repair shop so that he can drop off his truck and I can drive him home. He comes out of the mechanic's office and gets into the passenger seat.
"What? You're not going to let me drive?" he says.
"Nope. It's my car. You've got shotty; you can pick the radio station."
"Thanks. I paid for it."
"Oh well."
"Make a right here."
"Yeah, I know."
"So, when're you going back to school?"
"Couple weeks."
"I think we should talk about, you know, protection."
I sniggle. "Dad, I'm not a virgin."
He looks at me with the smile of an offended best friend: "You bitch." Not mean. Just annoyed that I didn't tell him. But not surprised either. Like he knew this day was coming, knew since the day I was born. He gets serious. "Do you use protection?"
"Yes," I say.
"Well, you know that's my biggest concern." He pauses. "I'm gonna call Mom and ask her if she wants a hoagie. Want to stop by Lee's?"
"Sure, where is it?"
"I'll tell you." He gets on his cell phone to call Mom. He seems to call her a lot. To check up on her, or to hear her voice? When he gets off the phone, I ask him, "Dad, do you love Mom?"
"Of course. I mean, it's not the same as when we got married. You know, she's not the same person I married."
I'm defensive. "You're not the same person she married either."
"Listen, you know it's hard with her being sick. Some guys would have left her, but I could never do that. This is just my life."
I say, "I just worry. About, I don't know, because she's weaker now. And with Hayley sleeping on your floor until she was fourteen? How did you two have sex all those years?"
"I'd just throw your mom in the closet and lock the door."
"What!"
He was grinning. "Don't tell her I told you that."
I park in front of Lee's hoagie shop, putting on the chocolate velour jacket that is his, his hair receding, and he says, "Yeah, what do you think all those blankets were in the closet for anyway?"