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  I was in the master bathroom Jacuzzi, listening to an R & B and rap station, which Layne would have scolded me for if she were alive. As further retribution, I was sipping my second glass of full-bodied red wine. I leaned back against the bath cushion and closed my eyes, remembering how diligently I had wanted to follow Layne’s wishes for her funeral. She had documented every detail with her attorney in advance, unbeknownst to me, and I was merely handed the paperwork the day after she died.

  We held the service at the funeral home of a wealthy friend of hers. Everyone in attendance wore designer dresses and expensive suits. It was a boring service, nothing like the spirited funerals I had attended as a child for family members of my father. Layne’s parents spoke about her upbringing and the successes she achieved from grade school until she died. Jenna and I talked about our family life, reading from a script Layne had written herself. I learned that every two years she had provided her attorney with a revision.

  Layne had selected which family members and friends would be allowed to speak. There was no allotment for anyone else to express their grief. The only moment they had was just before the service ended, when all the attendees walked to the front to say their final good-byes to Layne’s closed casket.

  My eyes shot open, and I sat upright in the bubbly water. “She was there,” I whispered.

  I remembered seeing her now. She’d worn a simple black dress, with a veiled hat covering her face. Nina had stopped and rested her hands on the white casket before kissing it. Then she had turned and glanced at me and Jenna through the lace, and her eyes had darted ahead when my eyes met hers.

  “Un-fucking believable.”

  I picked up the wineglass and threw it across the stark white bathroom. Dark burgundy droplets splattered the wall, and glass crashed on the floor. I grabbed the bottle off the ledge of the tub, turned it upright over my lips, and swallowed until it was empty. I couldn’t believe Nina had had the audacity to attend the funeral. But, after she had fucked Layne for seven years, should I have expected anything otherwise from her?

  My phone rang, disrupting my thoughts.

  “What?” I answered angrily.

  “Oh my God, Mom. What’s wrong?” Jenna sounded panicked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You sound mad.”

  “I am.”

  “About what? Are you okay?”

  “Enough with the questions. I’m fine, all right? I’m relaxing in the tub with wine.”

  “Have you had more than one glass of wine?”

  I became more agitated. Even my own daughter had been trained to maneuver Layne’s puppet strings in her absence. “Is it your duty to monitor my drink intake?”

  “No, it’s just that I know how you get when you drink.”

  “Is that so? Tell me, how do I get?”

  “Well, Layne once told me that you act like Grandmother when you drink, and that’s why you’re allowed only one glass of wine.”

  “Excuse me? When did she tell you such a lie?”

  “Years ago, Mom. You had fallen asleep one night after dinner, and I was helping Layne clean the kitchen. She told me how Grandmother had gotten into a lot of trouble with Granddad one night after drinking too much. She told me you were the same way, flirting with one of her friends after too much wine. She said in order to keep us a family, you weren’t allowed to drink more than one.”

  “And you believed that shit?”

  Jenna was silent for a few seconds. In twenty years she had never heard me curse. When she was a young child, I had refrained from using poor language around her. As Jenna got older, Layne had forbidden me from using profanity in front of her.

  “I was, like, twelve years old,” she went on. “I didn’t have a reason not to believe her. Plus, I remember living downstairs with Grandmother and Granddad, and if drinking is what caused their fights, I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen to you and Layne.”

  I knew which story Layne had told Jenna. My mind backtracked to when I was age nine. It was the first and only time the police had been called on my father after a night of partying gone wrong. They had been out with my aunt Chelon, my father’s sister, celebrating her boyfriend’s birthday. My father, apparently, had perceived my mother’s friendliness toward this man as excessive and unnecessary. Why did she have to hug him like that? Did she have to sing “Happy Birthday” so loud? She must have wanted to fuck him, the way she was smiling at him all night. These rhetorical questions and allegations I heard as my father punched and kicked my mother on the floor above me. I was lying in bed, hugging my favorite doll, when my mother eventually came screaming into our kitchen downstairs. Grandma, who normally “stayed out of grown folks’ business,” even that of her abused daughter, had already called 911, and by the time my father came banging on our now locked door, the police were at the front.

  Grandma had advised me to stay put in my room, but I was curious despite my fear. Although Grandma might have saved my mother from hospitalization or even death, I watched my mother, in hysterics, curse and fuss at her mother after my father was handcuffed and taken to the county jail. With a warming black eye and an oozing bloody nose, my mother insisted my father hadn’t meant any harm, and pleaded with Grandma for bail money. She whined and fussed and threatened Grandma with suicide and even with burning down the house. It was only when my mother flaunted her birth rights and threatened that she’d take me away that my grandmother reached inside her housecoat and tossed a handful of twenties to my mother. My mother was gone without a “Thank you” or a “Good-bye,” raw face and all.

  “Taryn!” Grandma had caught me peeking from my door and scooted me back into bed. Even though I hadn’t seen the physical effects of my parents’ abusive relationship before that night, I didn’t cry, even with the visual of my mother’s battered face. I hurt for my mother, but not for her physical pain. I wanted only to see her happy, and if being away from my father hurt her, which clearly it did, then I wanted them together. I accepted her joy in any form, despite Grandma’s warnings.

  “When you grow up to be a lady, don’t let no man treat you the way your daddy does your mama. People show love in funny ways, but that’s not love, baby.”

  If Grandma had been watching the flow of my and Layne’s relationship, would she have thought Layne’s psychological control and betrayal any different than the abuse my father inflicted on my mother? I shouldn’t have been shocked by the exaggerated story Layne told Jenna, but I was. What other lies had she fed my child?

  “I’ve never lost control under the influence,” I told Jenna now. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t even drink until I met Layne. I resent her for fabricating that story to her advantage. You should know me better than to believe that kind of story from her.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was right. Listen to you.”

  “What did you say, young lady?”

  “You’re acting so different, so aggressive.”

  I knew I sounded unlike my usual self. I had already heard the change in my tone. It was heavier, sultrier even, and pissed off.

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “I guess I’m just used to Layne being the vocal one.”

  “It’s a new day, and it’s just me and you now, so get used to it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” she said softly.

  “It doesn’t have to be what?”

  “Just be me and you. I do have another parent somewhere, don’t I?”

  “What are you saying?”

  Jenna hesitated before she spoke. “Well, I joined this group here at school. It’s a bunch of us girls who grew up without our fathers. We’re fatherless daughters.”

  My heart pounded quickly. “And?”

  “We talk about our experiences and how we grew up. Everyone knows I’ve had two mothers for the past ten years, and for the most part, no one has much to say about that. Except it reinforces everyone’s idea that I should know who my father is.”

  Jenna
waited for me to respond.

  “Well?” she said, pressing, after I said nothing.

  “You just lost one of your parents. Is that where this is coming from?”

  “I miss Layne, but no, this isn’t about her.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Jenna.”

  She groaned; her breath sounded like static in the phone. “When is a good time to talk about it?” she asked in the sassy tone that she used when she was frustrated with me, and that I had always ignored.

  “Later. Let’s discuss this during your next visit home.”

  “Fine. I’ll be coming home the week before Thanksgiving,” Jenna said, though I had stopped listening. After twenty years, why had she now decided to find out her father’s identity? I couldn’t do this now. Not now, not with everything else I was dealing with, not with everything else I wanted to explore and learn about myself. How could I also handle her sudden need to know her father?

  “So is that all right?”

  “What?”

  “Coming.”

  “Whenever, Jenna. Come anytime. I’m here.”

  “Okay, the twenty-second. I’m going to book the ticket on your card now.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going to let you get back to your wine, Mom. Don’t have too much,” she advised, as if Layne had left her with a list of what I was and was not allowed to do.

  “Good-bye.” I hung up the phone and rested against the tub, allowing the pulsing water from the jets to prod and soothe my muscles. However, I couldn’t relax and shake off the conversation I had had with Jenna. Within a few minutes, I lifted the outlet knob, and the water started its twirl down the drain. I grabbed a towel, dried off, and walked naked to the kitchen for more wine.

  Chapter Six

  The building was gray and dull, like a slab of concrete had been dropped between two buildings. It was surrounded by busy, lively bars and restaurants on a main street just west of downtown. I had passed the location on a few occasions on my way to the Magnificent Mile and had never noticed it.

  “This is it?” I asked Nina over the Bluetooth speaker in my car.

  “Yes.”

  The club we sat in front of was one of three that Nina and Layne had frequented.

  It was 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday night, and most passersby crept past the building as if it weren’t there. Only a few people, a trio of two men and a woman, stopped in front of the slate and iron door and sought entrance.

  “Are you ready?” Nina asked me.

  “I am.”

  Although I had been perturbed by the realization that Nina had attended Layne’s funeral, it hadn’t overshadowed the newfound power I felt after the near choking episode in her office. I had replayed the incident repeatedly in my mind, on an ego trip, envisioning that if I hadn’t snapped out of my daze, I might have killed her.

  I drove another block to a public parking lot and paid the fee. We exited our cars, each of us bundled under wool coats, as the temperature had dropped from above to below average Midwest numbers. Together we walked, both of us well dressed, our heels tap-dancing against the sidewalk. We looked like two friends on our way for after-work cocktails and casual conversation, not the taboo lovers we had become, preparing for my introduction to an evening of unrestricted voyeuristic pleasure.

  At the door Nina knocked twice, and the cover to a small rectangular peephole slid sideways. Bland blue-gray eyes surveyed us before the cover closed once again. The door buzzed, and we were granted access. A bulky male, muscular in the arms and fat around his midsection, stood before us. I saw recognition dawn between him and Nina, though they didn’t acknowledge one another. It felt like a scene from one of my favorite crime shows, like the clubs they showcased, the ones with secret back-alley entrances and passwords to disclose for admission.

  “Identification, please,” he requested.

  Nina had already advised that I leave my wallet behind, so in my pocket I had only my driver’s license and eight twenty-dollar bills. The bouncer took both my and Nina’s ID and went into an office. Through a small window we could see him quickly scan and print copies of our licenses, then place the papers on top of a small pile. He returned to us.

  “For our records only,” he informed me prior to handing me my license.

  “Protocol,” Nina echoed.

  From the small space in which we stood, we moved through another door into a dim hallway. Light fog circled about the air as we walked toward yet a third door. Nina paused before opening it, glancing back at me again and asking if was I ready. I nodded to her. Inside the next room, I didn’t know what to take in first, the porn playing on the big-screen televisions, the bar filled with people making out, or the couples freely engaging in sexual acts on the couches to our left.

  The room smelled of spice. And sex. It smelled like Nina and that part of her I craved to devour once more. Nina led us toward two empty stools on the opposite side of the bar from the entrance. My legs shook with nervousness as we walked past a man and a woman leaning against the bar. He was performing body shots from her cleavage, and his thick pink tongue licked salt, lemon, and tequila from her skin. Beyond them was another couple, and they kissed and groped one another.

  “Hey, sexy,” the brunette woman whispered to me as we walked past, before placing her tongue back in the man’s mouth.

  As we rounded the bar, I stopped, caught off guard by a man who sat on a stool, his zipper open, a blond woman’s head bobbing up and down between his legs as she sucked his manhood. He puffed a cigarette and winked at us as we took seats next to him. I tried not to look, but they were right next to me. My eyes locked on the man’s veined, pale penis, and I noted how it disappeared into the woman’s mouth every other second. She sucked hard and fast, her cheeks caving and filling with each up-and-down movement. A few minutes later, the man placed a hand firmly on top of the blonde’s head and released a few grunts. The woman swallowed, taking deep gulps, stoop up, wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin, and took the man’s cigarette and began puffing on it herself.

  Finally, I turned to Nina, who had placed our drink orders. I removed my coat, which Nina took and placed with hers on the stool beside her.

  “Seriously?” I mouthed to her, unsure how I felt about what I had just witnessed. Maybe I would feel differently if it had been two women.

  “Have you ever?” Nina asked.

  “Only once,” I admitted. “With Jenna’s father.” I recalled the incident and told her about it. “I was fifteen. We had just left White Castle and had walked to one of his friends’ houses. The place was filled with guys, all older than me, and girls about my age. Everyone was smoking and drinking. I didn’t do either.”

  Because of the effect drinking had on my father, I had refrained from alcohol as a teenager and had never had any until I met Layne. I had smoked weed once, but Grandma had smelled it on my clothes and had told me that I was too good to smoke reefer and that it would turn my lips black.

  “He smoked with his friends and then took me into a bedroom,” I continued. “We had already had sex a couple times, and I thought that’s what he wanted again. I started to take off my shorts, but he told me no and asked me to take off my shirt instead. He sat on the edge of the bed and told me to get on my knees in front of him, so I did. He pulled his penis out and asked me the same question you did. Had I ever sucked dick? I told him I hadn’t. He liked that. He instructed me to lick my lips and open. Then he stuck it in my mouth.”

  I paused to accept my drink from the bartender.

  “He told me what to do. Lick, suck, and stroke. The whole time he pinched my nipples. I coughed and gagged when he came, but he held my head down and made me swallow it. The taste . . .”

  “Bitter.”

  “Yes. I hated it and never did it again. We had sex a few more times before he moved on to another girl.”

  I took a sip of the rum concoction Nina had ordered for me. It created an immediate buzz, not surprising
considering my body was accustomed only to wine.

  “There was a man many years ago, when I was much younger, who wanted nothing but for me to give him head,” Nina told me. “I don’t hate men at all, but I have never wanted to be with one since him. Women, now that’s my specialty, even though I still like to watch straight sex and gay boys. This place is the best of all worlds. It’s for those who want to be free to do whatever, wherever, and however they want to. There’s no pressure. Most people come with people they plan to have sex with, but there’s no requirement to have sex, either. You and I can sit here all night long and watch with no questions.”

  Nina cocked her head to the side. I followed the direction in which she was pointing and saw a man seated in a reclined chair, stroking himself. “Some people come alone and masturbate their evening away. It’s like a lovefest. People who are alone, couples, or groups, all are welcome. Even the bartenders indulge from time to time,” Nina went on. “This one here, one night she fucked herself on top of the bar with a beer bottle.”

  I looked at the middle-aged woman, who appeared to be a mother, judging by the scratchy stretch marks that scarred her belly. She had full breasts and wide hips, and her loose thighs suggested that she hadn’t exercised in years. She was average looking, and with clothes on, she could be the woman picking fruit next to me in the grocery store, or a fellow shopper I said hello to as we passed one another while browsing in a department store.

  “We’re no different than everybody else,” Nina explained, reading my thoughts. “We get up and go to work each day, some of us have families, we’re young, we’re old, and we’re single, married, gay, straight, bi, black, white, Asian, whatever. We come from every color of the rainbow.”